Data Mining- here we come

No Gravatar

A computer game is about to become an important medical research tool.  Because all of you who play its games (I never found the time to join in), have provided massive data that can be mined to determine some pretty important facts.  The game site?  Lumosity.com.   You know, the game that trains your brain.  (To do what, I might ask?)

Lumosity.com

 

 

 

 

It’s a big question.  While these games may make you better at the games, there is absolutely no data that demonstrate your raw intelligence is augmented.  Or that skills not directly related to the game are developed.  But the games do assess our ability to time-slice (we don’t multi-task) or handle divided attention.

Believe it or not, some 60 million folks visit the site pretty much every day.  And, the 7 years (and growing) of data that the site collects can help researchers learn how the human brain changes over time and how it works on a daily basis.  Which is why Lumosity is providing access to academic researchers to mine the data.  Already, about 50 scientists from elite institutions (Harvard, Duke, Stanford, among others) have lined up to do so.

In this regard, Lumosity is different from other firms.  The other firms (like Google and Facebook) actively guard their data to insure that only they can have access.  (By the way, that’s why we now know that it’s not 6 degrees of separation between us and any other person, but 4.74.)

What will these researchers do with the data?  For starters, maybe now we will be able to use real data to determine how much sleep we really need to function at our best. (Actually, this is why we now believe that the 8 hours of sleep myth is just that- 7 may be the ideal number.)  Or maybe we can use location data to see if our local environment contributes to various diseases (like Parkinson’s or dementia).

We can also use the data to see how our brain function changes with age.  Sure we know our cognitive capabilities diminish with time, but these games may yield definitive data about when and how that happens.

Now, of course, it does mean that our data is going to be combed.  [Boy, am I glad I didn’t use Lumosity.  Oh, and I also have no GPS enabled on my cell phone, so a lot of apps “can’t” be installed.  (That means they want MY  (or your) data without our true permission.  Oh, I know they promise ‘they’ will “scrub” the data.  But I know how hard that was to do when I ran clinical trials. And, we didn’t have decades of data on 60 million folks with which to deal.]    But, it also means that the researchers are going to have to rely on how truthful each person is when they sign up for the app.

After all, if they lie about their age, their gender, etc.- how valuable can the data be?  Or, what happens when two- or more- folks share the same account?

As you can see, there are plenty of wrinkles to be ironed out.

Share this:
Share this page via Email Share this page via Stumble Upon Share this page via Digg this Share this page via Facebook Share this page via Twitter
Share