What are your thoughts on Cogmed to increase working memory? There are a number of treatments on the market right now that are based on these neuropsychological theories of ADHD as an executive disorder particularly that involves working memory Torkel Klingberg is the developer of Cogmed he is a Swedish scientist Cogmed is working memory training it is practicing digit-span forward and backwards and spatial memory forward and backward for about 45 minutes a day with your child you do need to reward them because it gets boring to tears after the first day or two so you have to have a token system a reward program in place (The) program cost several thousand dollars. Now I have visiited Sweden and his lab. I've gone over their data and it does look like this produces a temporary improvement in working memory and that results in a temporary decrease in ADHD symptoms but even Klingberg has shown that with 3 months of training or up to 6 months of training the effect might last maybe three months and then you have to start the retraining again so so this is, he likening it I think very aptly to an athlete, like a weight lifter trying to train muscle mass this isn't anything willful you're just trying to expand the capacity of the brain for working memory and just like an athlete who exercises I can build up my biceps but if I stop exercising for a month guess what's going to happen my bicep is gonna atrophy now because it's not being exercised as much and the same is true with these neuropsychological training programs that we've seen so far now Klingberg gets royalties from the company and we would like to see his research replicated by someone who does not have a financial stake in the success of the company so it is being tested at five universities in the US I know of at least one here in Canada as well When these studies are over we're gonna have an idea about whether his findings could be replicated but even if they are replicated let's not forget what he found this is a temporary exercising program that has to be reinstituted several times a year to sustain the gains now let me tell you something else if it turns out that this works why would you spend several thousand dollars when you can buy a Nintendo DS and the Brain Age software which does both of these things as well, and at least six other frontal lobe executive function tasks it's just as much fun if not more so its one-tenth the cost so I would directed you to Nintendo before I would say... send you to Cogmed (audience laughs) and if you do not want to invest a couple hundred bucks, the cost of the DS with the software (you can) get Scientific American Mind This is the popular science magazine: Scientific American they also publish one called Scientific American Mind The last issue of Mind was a review of all internet sites that have executive function training programs on them where you can go, some of them are free most of them have a a monthly fee that you can sign on for and there's the software there's the games there's tracking your successes and failures all the things that Nintendo and Cogmed are doing can be done through these websites without buying the equipment usually for like $9 or $10 bucks a months some are more some are less some are more interesting some are less interesting but there's a review of all these brain training web sites in that magazine and it's very good by the way Nintendo comes out looking really good because it's the only portable system you can take anywhere and practice anytime even if you're waiting in a car for little league to start you know so up look around Cogmed is not the only thing out there but let's wait for the research to come out before we know whether this is really gonna turn out to be a coping tool and that's all it is it is not a cure not by any means that was probably more information than you ever wanted to hear (audience laughs)