Grants & Support

Posit Science has been awarded multiple competitive grants from funding institutions. These grants help Posit Science to learn more about the applied science of brain plasticity and aging, and ultimately support the development of new training programs to address broader topics in brain health. While the grants vary in their purpose, they all support the development of innovative approaches to harnessing our brains’ remarkable plasticity to make positive change.

Grant 1: Brain Plasticity Rehabilitation of Visual Cognition
National Institutes of Health Grant # 1 R 43 EYO16273-01A1
Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Grant
This SBIR grant was awarded to Posit Science by the National Eye Institute (NEI), which is one of the 27 distinct institutes that comprise the National Institutes of Health (NIH). SBIR grants are awarded following a competitive review process by boards of relevant scientists—less than a quarter of grant proposals are funded. This award reaffirms our steadfast belief in the various applications for positively engaging brain plasticity. It will allow us to develop a computer-based training program to improve speed of processing, attention and memory in the visual system, much as our first Brain Fitness Program does in the auditory domain.

Grant 2: Brain Plasticity Based Training for Schizophrenia
National Institutes of Health Grant # 1 R42 MHO73358-01
Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Grant
The National Institute of Mental Health, another NIH institute, awarded an STTR grant to Posit Science for the development of a novel, neuroscience-based training program for the treatment of cognitive deficits in schizophrenia. Posit Science will be collaborating with Dr. Sophia Vinogradov of the University of California San Francisco and Dr. Bruce Wexler of Yale University to develop and test a computer-based intervention that could substantively improve schizophrenic individuals’ cognitive functioning and quality of life.

Grant 3: Brain Plasticity Based Training for Focal Dystonia
National Institutes of Health Grant # 1 R43 HDO49251-01A1
Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Grant
Posit Science was awarded an SBIR Grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) to explore novel approaches to remediate focal dystonia, a professionally devastating movement disorder, which currently has no effective treatments. We aim to develop hand-held computer-controlled devices that will be used in a training program to rapidly, efficiently and completely restore normal sensory and hand motor control abilities.

Grant 4: Imaging Individual Brain Dynamics Related to Cognition and Performance on Computer-Based Training
UC Discovery Grant
Posit Science and the University of California at San Francisco were awarded a joint UC Discovery grant, which has the unique goal of forming a 3-way partnership between the University of California, industry collaborators, and the State of California. This joint project with the functional imaging laboratory of Dr. Greg Simpson will compare individual performances on the Posit Science Brain Fitness Program to variations in human brain network dynamics. These brain measures will further establish variations in brain dynamics that correlate with cognitive performance in attention and working memory tasks. The knowledge obtained from this imaging study is expected to shed light on individual variations in performance on our training programs, as well as further a growing field of academic inquiry into the neural mechanisms of working memory and attention.