Brain training for kids

Kort.X® is a scientifically based brain training programme that lastingly improves children’s mental and physical performance. The varied programme aims to get children excited through play and includes the following elements:

1. Every session starts with fun endurance games to activate the children (effect: increased production of neurotransmitters).
2. In the main phase, coordination exercises combined with cognitive tasks challenge both head and body (learning and concentration phase).
3. Finally, automating specifically selected elements helps to consolidate and further develop the children’s skills in the long term.

The name Kort.X® comes from “cortex” (the Latin term for the cerebral cortex). The cortex is the part of the brain where long-term memory is anchored. Everything we know and can do is stored here in the form of nerve connections. Areas that are used often become a dense road network of nerves – four-lane motorways with lots of traffic, so to speak. Areas that are rarely used have fewer nerve connections, which, like hiking trails that nobody maintains, become “overgrown”. The system in our head constantly reacts and adapts to stimuli and challenges. Kort.X® training uses this effect and specifically activates nerve pathways to build and expand the roads in the head. This has been shown to achieve a lasting increase in the brain’s efficiency:

• A study with 500 primary school children showed that after 9 weeks of training (1 school lesson of Kort.X® per week) the children’s concentration increased significantly, by up to 36%. Compared with primary school children who did a variety of sports during the same period (climbing, athletics, gymnastics, ball games and the like), the lasting improvement in the Kort.X® children could still be measured 3 months after the training had ended!
• Another study with students at a pre-vocational school showed that students who trained Kort.X® for 1.5 hours a week achieved a significant increase in IQ – compared with students of the same age who did 1.5 hours a week of sports such as hiking, winter sports, swimming, climbing and the like.
• Further studies showed that motor control (balance, speed of reaction) also improved significantly after Kort.X® training.

Strict scientific criteria were applied to test the effects of Kort.X® at the Department of Sport Science of the University of Innsbruck. To ensure maximum objectivity, external institutes were also brought in as a control.