Cognitive Neuroscience
Understanding behavior through understanding the brain and cognition
To put it simple. In order to understand behavior, you need to understand the brain. Cognitive Neuroscience studies the brain’s information processing and how this generates thoughts, feelings, decisions and actions. And the result in terms of observable behavior and performance. It is all about understanding and helping people.
As both people and the environment are dynamic and complex, we need assessment tools that can measure and reflect this dynamic inside our brains. So that we can predict performance in different contexts. We can call it “successful- or target oriented behavior”.
This is a field of science that has been around for > 70 years and has gone through a drastic development, bringing sharp and evidence-based understanding to the world. The tools and the know-how have, to a large extent, stayed in the academy and psychiatric clinics.
This is explained by the traditional focus on understanding and helping people with cognitive disability. It is however the exact same abilities in the normal population that are used when cognition functions well or very well. Thus, the exact same assessments can be used to understand people’s ability and capacity in any context. This has been proven in a variety of studies in sports, defense and business.
Neuropsychology
Neuropsychology is closely related to cognitive neuroscience
Neuropsychology is a specialization within psychology. It studies the relation between behavior and brain function. A neuropsychologist is trained to use the sharp tools developed in neuroscience to better understand and help people function optimally. And to predict behavior. An integral and important part in a psychologist’s trade is to validate the test result and translate them to individual conditions in specific contexts.
Missing Piece
Executive Capacity
Individual and variable
The individual ability to function dynamically in a changing environment can be called executive capacity. It simply means the ability to handle and perform various tasks under shifting contexts, time pressure and complexity.
The executive capacity is a very individual and dynamic process, resulting in various behaviors and performance levels. It is variable both within a person and related to changes in the environment.
Understanding this capacity and variability adds a missing piece when it comes to assessing suitability and function in various contexts.
The Frontal Lobe
Our Control Tower
The executive capacity is made up by a set of abilities called executive functions or frontal lobe abilities.
The frontal lobe – prefrontal cortex – is the node controlling the rest of the brain functions. The frontal lobe is sometimes called the control tower or the conductor.
Benefits
The capacity of cognitive abilities varies within and between individuals
By assessing individual capacity and its variation we can better understand in what tasks, situations and contexts a person – naturally – will function easily or with more resistance and cost. This is the big contribution that cognitive neuroscience brings to the table. And cannot be assessed by other tools.
Cognitive Assessments
The assessments are made up solely by ability tests
These tests are standardized and normalized to the normal population. Assessment can be both manual and digital. Manual testing is performed by a licensed neuropsychologist, who gather objective test data but also subjective observations during the test session. Digital testing makes it easier and more cost-effective to test a larger number of individuals, independently of location. It also allows for gathering of rich data. And combined with advanced analytics like machine learning to find patterns and predictive indexes.
The tests are constructed to simulate and imitate real life situations where our different cognitive abilities are put to the test. The cognitive functioning is sampled and stress tested with various task introducing time pressure and various levels of complexity.
Scientific Publications
Capacio Founders Publications Related to Executive Functions
Executive Functions Predict the Success of Top-SoccerPlayers
Predrag Petrovic, Torbjörn Vestberg, Roland Gustafson, Liselotte Maurex, Martin Ingvar
2012
There are 100s of global studies citing, repeating and expanding the field of cognitive functioning