Rebuilding Student Focus: Neuroscience-Informed Cognitive Training | Dominick Fedele

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Many educators are noticing the same trend.
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Students are more easily distracted and mentally tired than they used to be.
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So today we explore ways to strengthen focus during learning with an innovative approach to cognitive training.
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In each episode, I discuss problems we as teachers and parents are facing and what people are doing in their communities to fix it.
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What are the variables?
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And how can we duplicate it to maximize student outcomes?
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Teachers across the country are noticing the same pattern.
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Students are becoming more easily distracted, mentally tired, and less able to sustain focus during learning.
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Neuroscience helps explain why.
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Core cognitive systems like working memory, processing speed, and inhibitory control, the skills that allow students to hold information, stay on task, and manage distractions, are under more strain than in previous years.
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Cognitive neuroscientist Dr.
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Adele Diamond has shown that these systems are highly sensitive to stress, overload, and fatigue, yet also remarkably trainable through repeated targeted practice thanks to the brain's neuroplasticity.
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Adding to this picture, educational psychologist Dr.
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John Sweller's cognitive load theory explains that when the brain's working memory becomes overwhelmed by complex instructions, simultaneous tasks, and constant digital stimulation, learning efficiency drops.
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Many teachers see this as students losing momentum more quickly, becoming overwhelmed sooner, and struggling to engage with sustained academic tasks.
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Recent development and educational reports also note post-pandemic declines in learning stamina paired with the constant stimulation of digital environments.
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And academically, these cognitive constraints affect everything from reading comprehension to problem solving.
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The promising news is that emerging research shows cognitive training can strengthen these underlying skills.
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Through structured practice, gamified exercises, and targeted repetition, schools are beginning to explore how strengthening the brain's core systems can better support learning readiness, focus, and confidence.
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Here to discuss the growing focus challenge is Dominic Fidelli, CEO and founder of Mastermind Cognitive Training.
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Dominic is at the intersection of neuroscience, vision training, and gamified technology, designing tools that strengthen the cognitive systems students rely on for focus, memory, and learning.
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At Mastermind, he oversees product vision, research initiatives, and global partnerships, all centered on one mission to help students learn better by strengthening the brain itself.
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Dominic, welcome to the show.
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Thanks for having me.
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Looking forward to it.
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So you've worked across education, health, and the performance sectors.
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What led you to focus specifically on cognitive training as the solution to today's attention challenges?
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Well, it was interesting.
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I had an opportunity coming from education and then working with a company that worked with kids who struggled with a lot of neurodevelopmental needs.
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I started looking for technology solutions to implement into our business and got to meet with neuroscientists, therapeutic developers, cognitive specialists, and other educators to really see what existed.
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And it was so interesting to see such a diverse grouping of ed tech opportunities.
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But I really dove into this gamified concept of cognitive training.
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And really the goal being, how do we help the foundational skills necessary to learn rather than just trying to drive, you know, how do we drive a new curriculum?
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How do we try and just deal with a student as they are?
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Because the goal for us is really to drive cognitive readiness, cognitive function.
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So when they go into a classroom, they're able to be ready to learn, absorb more, and be able to give out more.
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So it was really just a learning by meeting with people and learning more and more about neuroscientists and where brains are today.
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So when educators say that students are struggling to stay focused, what is happening to the brain and which cognitive systems are under strain today?
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Yeah, it's it's really interesting.
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You probably hear it all the time about technology really changing brain patterns and habits.
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And what has happened is we are being driven every day to go towards quick, intense stimuli.
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And we want these shiny objects very quickly, and then as soon as we have it, we want to go to the next one.
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And that these fast switches keep you from ever really focusing on one thing.
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So what's happening is there's becoming a greater and greater weakness related to focusing on standardized, steady information and processes.
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And that starts to take you away from deep focus.
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So more and more, you're strengthening the habits of quick in and out, intense action, and less on things that you need to focus on over time to really understand and engage with.
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So that's a major issue when it comes to technology.
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But you have the anxiety factor so many times now here about people struggling with anxiety, and it's real and it's difficult.
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When you have anxiety, it takes away from your brain's ability to put resources towards attention and memory.
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So there's only a limited amount of resource your brain has.
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And when you start taking away from putting more in one area, you're taking away from others.
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And then the last thing I'll say is this is a pet topic of mine, is sleep.
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More and more people aren't getting the quality sleep that they need.
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Some of it is from technology, from some of it's from hectic schedules.
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I'll share quickly.
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I'm on a school today doing testing for students on a new research project.
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And seven out of the 10 this morning have come in for eye testing and are failing eye fatigue tests.
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And when you ask them what's going on, well, I didn't sleep well.
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I was up all night playing video games.
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They were doing these different things.
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And that's a factor too that I think also goes on overlooked.
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Is there anything specifically that you're doing to target eye fatigue or the complications that are happening because of that?
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Yeah, so we built in a full battery of eye movement and control exercises.
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And one of the biggest issues out there is the ability for an individual to control their eye movements, to keep them fixated, to keep them moving smoothly.
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And that actually impacts how you take in information and process quickly and make decisions.
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You know, I mentioned I'm testing at a school today.
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We do deep eye testing on students to measure their control.
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And we do full reading assessments to see actually how they read.
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You can see how their eyes move across the page and then how they comprehend and test against it.
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And there are so many kids and adults where you might anticipate when you're following a ball across a screen, it's just going flat.
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But when you test it, the eyes could be fluttering and moving around.
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And that makes everything different.
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And I know when I was a parent of small kids, I would always say, just read your homework, get things done, do what you're supposed to do.
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And then I had an awakening one day to realize it wasn't a lack of wanting to do the homework.
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It was reading a paragraph, it was like running a marathon because their eyes didn't go line by line.
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They were going and fluttering all over the page and having to reread line after line just to get through.
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So there's a con there's a physiological issue with eye control that drives a lot when it comes to learning and especially reading.
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So does this have anything to do with attention when it comes to the eyes, or is it just a physical tracking?
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Yeah, it I would say both.
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When it comes to attention, when your eyes are fluttering, when you can't fixate on anything longer than you know, a couple seconds, you're all over the place.
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Yeah.
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If you can stabilize and get those eyes to move more smoothly and fixate and jump from near and far more efficiently, you can actually drive attention improvement.
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So you're doing some visual training as well in your programs.
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I had a child that had tracking problems.
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We would do eye training with a pencil tip of an eraser to strengthen those eyes.
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We tried to take a lot of these manual exercises and build them into technology to facilitate.
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So do you think things like having a scheduled time to shut off devices would help with something like that?
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Without question.
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Especially just going back to what we're talking about, these intense bursts.
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When you're looking at a screen, you can be sucked in and sucked in by so much information and shiny bells and whistles that it just keeps you going.
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And it's the whole concept of you can scroll for hours and hours that doesn't do well when it comes to learning and applying learning and memory and other areas.
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Do you think then that that impacts how we're developing lesson plans?
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Because if the brain is starting to develop those habits, is that something that teachers need to be cognizant of so that they can maybe create lessons that will hit that?
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Or do we need to say, no, push the brakes?
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We need to be completely away from that.
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Well, the the teacher's job is so hard because you can have a classroom.
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You know, I was just in a classroom the other day of 30 kids.
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Yeah.
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And there the needs and issues and opportunities are so diverse.
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And we have one or maybe a teacher and an assistant trying to work with this class under one curriculum.
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And it's just very, very difficult.
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And that's where we come in, or that's that's the at least approach we're looking at is how do we develop the foundational skills, attention, memory, executive function, response inhibition, processing to where we don't educate, but they can go into a classroom and they're ready to learn, and these areas of the brain are on to make the teacher's life easier, where they're not trying to develop curriculum for every student, but they have students that are more ready to learn what they are going to bring to the class that day.
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When we had come back to the classroom after COVID, I noticed the attention really shortened during that period of time.
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And their ability to sustain sitting, thinking, writing, processing was inhibited.
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It was as though I was training them to be able to have sustained focus one day at a time, one more minute, add it, add it, add it, until we got to the point where, all right, we're we're all back where we kind of should be.
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That reminded me of how when I started my dissertation work, there was like enormous amounts of reading that we would have to do, incredible amounts.
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And that first semester, I remember like my brain hurt.
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It was like, how much more can I shove into this?
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It is, you know, it was just too much at a point.
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And you and you hear about like, you know, too much coming in and it'll just at a at some point rolls off of you.
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But it physically hurt, like it was too much.
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And my professor had said everyone is gonna feel something called disequilibrium.
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It is where you are stretching your brain in the sense of its capacity to take on those longer sustained thinking, concentrating habits.
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And once I got to it, I was fine.
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And I felt like that's what I was doing with my students as well.
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And that is kind of what reminds me of what you're doing.
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When you talk about neuroplasticity, then can you expand on what is it and then how targeted exercises strengthen the brain's learning capacity?
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So neuroplasticity is the ability to drive new or more efficient neuropathways in the brain.
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And then exactly what you just said, it's targeting those areas to make them stronger and to develop these pathways.
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I look at it, you work the brain like a muscle, like any other.
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And if you want to work your biceps, you're going to do curls and you're going to do a lot of them over time with that repetition, and they get stronger.
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It's the same thing in the brain.
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If you work these areas of the brain over and over with a lot of repetition, but a lot of different layers where you're adding things in and functions that you're doing, you can drive a stronger, more efficient brain.
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And that's the entirety of what we're trying to do is tap into those neural networks and make them a stronger connection to bring in information, process faster, utilize their memory, and react with decisions.
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Your platform uses gamified cognitive training and it uses tablets and VR.
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I'm interested.
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How does that work in practice?
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Well, what we wanted to do is develop a training platform that was going to meet people where they're at.
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So many people just look at technology and say, it's bad for you, it releases dopamine, you play for 16 hours straight, get rid of it.
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It's not going away.
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And we wanted to meet people where they are, which so many people are used to video games.
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So we wanted to create a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down effect in a lot of ways.
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So we made our training games look and feel like video games.
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In virtual reality, it's full 360, immersive, gives a lot of depth.
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With the tablet, you can do the same thing where you're dedicating these exercises to your brain.
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And when someone feels like they're in a common environment, in this case, a video game, it makes them relax, it makes it have a little fun.
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You could have leaderboards, you can have fun with it.
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You could have training where you're shooting a blaster or where you're hitting something with paddles.
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But it can still be really targeted brain training, which is what our program is.
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So what we're finding is people are enjoying training, even though it is not a video game from the standpoint of when you train for 20 minutes per day, these kids will take off the headset and they're done because it does tax your brain a little bit.
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It is like a workout, it makes you a little tired, which is good.
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You're doing things that you're supposed to be doing.
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So it's not something that you'll play for hours and hours and hours, but we make it fun enough that they want to continue training because repetition is the whole key to drive change.
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We tell people all the time if you do it once per week, you're you're just not doing enough.
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We recommend two or three or more days per week.
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And we are in schools, so we've embedded into curriculum.
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We've partnered with groups that do after-school programs.
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We've also have at-home options.
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As long as somebody has a virtual reality headset, uh, we use MetaQuest or tablet, Android or Apple, or even mobile phone, which we have as a companion training piece.
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You can train wherever you'd like.
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How do you measure improvement or performance?
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Great question.
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So, what we have a full battery of assessments built into the training.
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So not only do you just go in and train, the first thing you do is the fixed part assessment.
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Three of the tests are clinical in nature, and three are performance-based.
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And at the end of that, you'll be given a report measuring your performance on each of the tests, but also giving you scores related to your focus and attention, your working memory, your processing speed, inhibition.
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And every 24 sessions of training, you will be reassessed and you'll be able to see over time the improvement in these different areas that are measuring your foundational skill set and your cognition.
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It's being picked up by universities in their research studies now where they're using our assessment to measure pre and post results on their platforms.
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So that's really been great to see.
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What kinds of feedback are you getting from students, from teachers?
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The teachers, I think, up front have always been a little hesitant.
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And when they see it in practice and understand that these aren't video games, even I sometimes want to stop calling them games because it gives the connotation that these are just games.
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When they see what we're doing, where we're driving executive function because of layered cognitive focus and cognitive skills and working those at once, and they start seeing the difference.
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When they see their student actually start to have better focus and attention, they're reading more efficiently.
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That's when they still they start to really get one over because not only do they the students like doing it, they're seeing the results, and it's making their job easier for them because they have students coming in that are ready to learn.
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From a student perspective, they enjoy it just because it is a break in the day and they play some form of video game.
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Like I said, it can be difficult to get through.
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A training session is about 15 to 20 minutes, but they enjoy doing it even though it's hard work.
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And that's always a hard needle to thread to make something that's fun enough, but is also really delivering something that is important and difficult to get people to do.
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But, you know, it is interesting too.
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We see teachers at times, hey, if you work really hard today, we'll get you into your mastermind training.
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So that's been fun to see.
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I'll say one more group is the parents.
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And there's nothing better than hearing parents say, we hear this all the time, I don't know what you're doing in this VR headset or on the tablet, but we're seeing a difference.
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You know, we work with more than just education.
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We work with athletes, we work with firefighter organizations, we work with seniors.
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And the good thing is it has benefit that goes beyond the classroom.
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When you're developing foundational brain skills like focus and attention, memory, et cetera, it applies to so many different areas of life.
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And we are seeing parents of athletes that are saying they're getting better in school and on the field.
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We're getting employees on jobs that are saying they're more focused at work and doing a better job.
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That's why I always go back that the focus on these foundational skills has so many applications, but our dedication of focus is really on academics.
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Like what is an activity or a game that you would have a student go through?
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Yeah, I'll give you a basic one.
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So, for example, you will be prompted with different shapes, different colored shapes.
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At the top of the screen, it will have a blue triangle and a green circle.
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And you will only, and they will be coming at you in ball in those shapes with distractor shapes and distractor colors.
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Okay.
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And you have to kind of catch or hit those shapes and colors as they come, and then you can start to layer it, where okay, you hit the green circle only with your right hand, and you hit the blue square with your left hand, and you start layering on different levels of cognitive function and instruction as you get harder and harder.
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And at the same time, you can have things moving faster, you can have more and more distraction going on, but that's the basic strove of game that we use.
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We do have over 40 games, so there are a lot of different ways that we go after this.
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And we did that because not only did we want to gamify it, we don't want it to seem like you're doing the same thing over and over.
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So we kept building different versions and different functionalities in the games that were going after similar things, but it didn't seem like you were doing the same thing every day.
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So do you hit all the different areas for each student or are you differentiating it based on their need?
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Yeah, the the program is the same for everyone.
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And I'm talking, we've gone down as early as five years old and up to 80 years old.
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Nice.
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Um, and again, from professional athletes we've had do the program to students that have different issues that they're working through.
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And we do that because each game doesn't focus on one skill.
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Each game will focus on four, five, six, seven different skills at once built into that functionality.
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And the key there is also it auto-levels to the individual.
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And it will get harder or easier based on their age, their skill level, however they're performing in the game.
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It will adapt to them and get better over time as they progress.
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Does it tap out?
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Is there is there a top tier where you go, you've hit it, you are the best.
00:21:04.740 --> 00:21:09.700
You can, this is the highest you could be it for focus, or does it just keep on pushing?
00:21:09.940 --> 00:21:11.139
It keeps on pushing.
00:21:11.139 --> 00:21:13.940
We haven't seen anybody max out any area.
00:21:13.940 --> 00:21:20.339
We have some that are up there, but the key to it is you can keep training and training over time and get better.
00:21:20.339 --> 00:21:27.779
And as you might imagine, somebody that's starting at a lower function level, you will see big gains.
00:21:27.779 --> 00:21:37.460
But even those kids and adults that are high performing individuals, straight A's, everything, we're still able to see incremental improvement.
00:21:37.460 --> 00:21:41.059
And my favorite story there is we worked with a race car driver.
00:21:41.059 --> 00:21:48.419
He was looking to get 0.0001% faster and just notching that out to get a little bit better.
00:21:48.419 --> 00:21:54.899
We've been doing a lot of research on our program and its impact on a lot of aspects in life, especially education.
00:21:54.899 --> 00:22:05.940
We are going to also start going back to those areas that we've done the research and test people a year, two years, three years, and more down the line to see how well it holds over time.
00:22:06.419 --> 00:22:12.740
How can teachers implement cognitive training in their classrooms without needing any additional materials?
00:22:13.139 --> 00:22:14.099
Yeah, it's interesting.
00:22:14.099 --> 00:22:17.539
Right out of the gate, there's no getting around that you need the equipment.
00:22:17.539 --> 00:22:18.819
You either need our headset.
00:22:18.819 --> 00:22:21.700
Sets or tablets to facilitate the program.
00:22:21.700 --> 00:22:25.619
Now, how you facilitate it can be fairly simple.
00:22:25.619 --> 00:22:29.539
You could build it into the classroom environment as part of the curriculum.
00:22:29.539 --> 00:22:30.899
You can do it after school.
00:22:30.899 --> 00:22:32.500
You can do it as homework.
00:22:32.500 --> 00:22:39.940
We recommend two to three days per week or more in a session that lasts between 12 and 20 minutes per session.
00:22:39.940 --> 00:22:49.700
The biggest thing, though, is the goal is to make the teacher's job easier by having these prepared students that are ready to pay attention and learn and take in information.
00:22:49.700 --> 00:22:53.460
So there is a cost from the standpoint of having the equipment.
00:22:53.460 --> 00:22:59.539
We are a low cost program, so that's not something that was to be a major worry.
00:22:59.539 --> 00:23:04.740
You have to find the time or how you're going to expect the student to actually do the program.
00:23:05.299 --> 00:23:08.579
Would parents be able to get this for their child or for their families?
00:23:08.899 --> 00:23:09.460
Absolutely.
00:23:09.460 --> 00:23:12.259
It's available in all app stores.
00:23:12.259 --> 00:23:14.980
So the MetaQuest App Store for VR.
00:23:14.980 --> 00:23:18.579
It's in Apple App Store, Android, Google App Store.
00:23:18.579 --> 00:23:20.419
So it's a download of an app.
00:23:20.740 --> 00:23:21.139
Nice.
00:23:21.539 --> 00:23:25.859
But you can actually sample for the basic games to see how the functionality works.
00:23:25.859 --> 00:23:26.980
So you can try that out.
00:23:27.220 --> 00:23:27.700
Very nice.
00:23:27.700 --> 00:23:29.779
Have you ever heard of Brain Gym before?
00:23:29.779 --> 00:23:37.220
It is a throwback of, okay, so Brain Gym was like activities to strengthen your brain, right?
00:23:37.220 --> 00:23:41.700
This is, of course, before apps, before, you know, any any iPads.
00:23:41.700 --> 00:23:56.179
One of them was you'd like, you take a piece of paper, ball it up on their right hand, and then they would hold it straight out, and then they would have to look at it, and then they'd have to toss it and catch it, toss it and catch it, and then bring it to the middle, to the left, same thing.
00:23:56.179 --> 00:23:59.779
Toss it, catch it, toss it, catch it, bring it to the middle, toss it, catch it, right?
00:23:59.779 --> 00:24:02.659
And the eye tracking in the left to right was one.
00:24:02.659 --> 00:24:06.339
The ribbon and the figure eight, walking in the figure eight.
00:24:06.339 --> 00:24:08.419
And the kids really, really loved it.
00:24:08.419 --> 00:24:11.619
Okay, so parents, teachers, they could go on the app store.
00:24:11.940 --> 00:24:13.700
So it's Mastermind Cognitive Training.
00:24:13.700 --> 00:24:14.019
Okay.
00:24:14.019 --> 00:24:17.700
You can go to our website at mastermindtraining.com.
00:24:17.700 --> 00:24:19.859
And there you could learn more about the program.
00:24:19.859 --> 00:24:24.099
You can also schedule a live overview where we can meet with you and talk about the program.
00:24:24.099 --> 00:24:25.460
We'd love doing that.
00:24:25.460 --> 00:24:30.500
You can download the app in any of the app stores and go through our demo so you can try it out.
00:24:30.500 --> 00:24:38.819
And you can email me to direct at D F E D E L E at mastermindtraining.com.
00:24:39.139 --> 00:24:39.460
All right.
00:24:39.460 --> 00:24:45.859
Well, thank you so much for all of your work that you're doing on the neuroscience cognitive side of learning.
00:24:45.859 --> 00:24:50.419
I think your insights really helped everybody learn that focus isn't just about effort.
00:24:50.419 --> 00:24:53.940
It's rooted into brain systems that make that learning possible.
00:24:53.940 --> 00:25:00.980
And the work that you're doing to strengthen those systems offers schools and teachers, parents a powerful and hopeful new approach.
00:25:00.980 --> 00:25:02.819
So I really appreciate your time with us today.
00:25:02.819 --> 00:25:03.220
Thank you.
00:25:03.539 --> 00:25:03.859
Thank you.
00:25:03.859 --> 00:25:06.259
We're excited and we appreciate you having me.
00:25:06.659 --> 00:25:19.779
If you have a story about what's working in your schools that you'd like to share, you can email me at Lisa at dr lisaarhassler.com or visit my website at www.drlisaarhassler.com and send me a message.
00:25:19.779 --> 00:25:22.819
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00:25:25.619 --> 00:25:32.819
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00:25:32.819 --> 00:25:39.379
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00:25:39.379 --> 00:25:44.179
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