{"id":3228,"date":"2012-08-06T16:06:26","date_gmt":"2012-08-06T16:06:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.zennioptical.com\/?p=3228"},"modified":"2024-12-10T23:25:52","modified_gmt":"2024-12-11T07:25:52","slug":"stroboscopic-training","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ca.zennioptical.com\/blog\/stroboscopic-training\/","title":{"rendered":"Stroboscopic Training Can Enhance Memory"},"content":{"rendered":"

Watching the Olympics this past weekend, one can see the payoff from years of training and hard work. However, Nike, one of the largest sport sponsors in the world, sees potential beyond marketing products that make you stronger and faster; they have their eyes set on technology that\u2019ll help people remember and \u201csee their sport better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nike commissioned a study at Duke University\u2019s Institute for Brain Sciences, led by Greg Appelbaum, to scientifically prove the benefits of \u201cstroboscopic training\u201d using Nike\u2019s Sparq Vapor Strobe sport glasses. The glasses simulate strobe lighting, which limits the wearer\u2019s vision to only brief snapshots of what is going on around them. What Nike hoped to prove is that simulating a strobe-like experience can increase visual short-term memory retention.<\/p>\n

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Plucking athletes from Duke\u2019s own sports program, the study had participants engage in physical activities, such as playing catch, with some of the participants wearing Nike\u2019s glasses while others wore eyewear with clear lenses. Afterwards, the participants took a memory test, in which eight randomly selected letters flashed up on a screen. Afterwards, the participants were asked to recall a letter, sometimes immediately after the letters, but in more challenging cases with a delay of up to 2.5 seconds.<\/p>\n

The tests proved that \u201cstroboscopic training\u201d can not only increase a person\u2019s ability to retain information, but that this increase in visual memory retention was still active up to 24 hours later. \u201cOur earlier work on stroboscopic training showed that it can improve perceptual abilities, but we don\u2019t know exactly how,\u201d says Stephen Mitroff, a member of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences. \u201cThis project takes a big step by showing that these improved perceptual abilities are driven, at least in part, by improvements in visual memory.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBy blocking or disrupting vision using a strobe or flicker effect that can be varied in speed,\u201d as Nike explains<\/a>, \u201can athlete can develop quicker reaction times and motor skills \u2026 and trains the brain to anticipate what\u2019s coming when the eyes are blocked.\u201d In more scientific terms, according to Duke\u2019s Greg Appelbaum, humans have \u201ca memory buffer in their brain that keeps information alive for a certain short-lived period,\u201d and by wearing strobe eyewear during training, athletes \u201cboost the ability to retain information in this buffer.\u201d<\/p>\n

The best part? Unlike Google Glass, which we\u2019ve covered quite a bit recently on this blog, anyone can purchase Nike\u2019s Sparq Vapor Strobe glasses now. The eyewear is the core of Nike\u2019s Sparq Sensor Performance System, which includes a Sensor Station that assesses visual and sensory performance skills to create an individualized training program. You can also read more about stroboscopic training and brain plasticity on Appelbaum\u2019s website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":null,"protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-teaser"],"acf":[],"contentshake_article_id":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ca.zennioptical.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ca.zennioptical.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ca.zennioptical.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ca.zennioptical.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ca.zennioptical.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3228"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ca.zennioptical.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96069,"href":"https:\/\/ca.zennioptical.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3228\/revisions\/96069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ca.zennioptical.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ca.zennioptical.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ca.zennioptical.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}