Christopher S Green
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Psychology
Can brain-training games really sharpen thinking, or do people improve just because they expect to? Cognitive training is studied as a way to boost mental skills in healthy adults.
- Fields
Psychology
Neuroscience
- Topics
placebo effect
cognitive training
brain training
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2028
What they work on
- Test whether cognitive training benefits can be produced by placebo, using 'pure expectation' methods in which participants are told that an inactive training program will improve their thinking.
- Test whether 'associative learning' methods, which pair training with a feeling of improved performance, can produce larger placebo effects on cognitive test scores.
- Compare the size of placebo effects in younger and older adults, across fluid intelligence, working memory and selective attention, and between in-lab and remote testing.
- Examine whether individual traits such as personality predict how strongly people respond to placebos in cognitive training.
More about the research
It is also studied as a way to slow or prevent age-related decline in people at risk for Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD). Critics argue that the gains may partly be placebo effects. Participants usually cannot be fully blinded, meaning they often can guess whether they received the real training. Yet few experiments have directly tested whether placebo effects occur in cognitive training, or whether they are large enough to explain past results.
Why it matters
Many conditions involve problems with thinking skills, including ADRD, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), schizophrenia, traumatic brain injury and mild cognitive impairment. Knowing how much of cognitive training's benefit comes from placebo could help researchers design and fairly evaluate treatments for these conditions. If placebo effects can be magnified, they might also be harnessed to strengthen interventions, especially for older adults at risk of dementia.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
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University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Psychology
Test whether older adults can learn, with practice, to selectively remember high-value information under stress or rushing, compared with younger adults, including when motivated by responsibility or fear of forgetting.
Alyssa Goldman
Boston College, MA·Social Science·Early-career
Estimate how personal social networks and social activities like volunteering change during the final five years of life, using growth curve models on National Health and Aging Trends Study data.
Chong Pak
Clemson University, SC·Psychology
Determine how individual differences in working memory and attention control (the ability to focus and resist distraction) relate to how well people perform with automated systems, using newly developed, validated attention control measures.
The school
University of Wisconsin-Madison: 91 labs on PI Pages, $1.9B a year on research, 854 research doctorates a year.
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