In less than 25 years, our attention spans have gone down from minutes — 2.5 of them — to mere seconds: 47 today. 

But could our brain be “plastic” enough that we can reverse or improve this cognitive decline? 

Adam Gazzaley - pioneering neuroscientist, inventor, entrepreneur and author – says yes. 

Meet the man who wants you to play ‘Mind Games’

Each human brain is made up of roughly 100 billion neurons. Researchers believed that the creation of these neurons, called neurogenesis, stalls shortly after birth. Scientists have now discovered that our brains can physiologically create new internal networks, reorganise synaptic connections, delete them and even generate new neurons at a later age. Basically, make functional and structural changes. This constitutes ‘brain plasticity’ and it’s where Gazzaley has located the entirety of his path-breaking work.

In 2013, the neurologist presented the first prototype of NeuroRacer, a simple 3D racing game he used to train 60-85 year olds suffering from cognitive decline. The subjects of the study showed significantly improved signs of working memory and sustained attention. Enhancements they retained for 6 months after the training ended. The applications of this innovation wasn’t just restricted to the symptoms of aging. In 2020, Gazzaley co-founded Akili Interactive which released the next-generation version of the game called EndeavorRx. It became the first-ever video game to be approved by the US FDA to treat ADHD in children aged 8-12. It has been noted to improve attention span, focus and serve as a digital trainer — but for your brain.

A global attention crisis

Despite its magisterial ability to think, imagine, remember and create, the average brain today is suffering from an unprecedented attention crisis. Down largely to its ‘ancient’ nature. “It’s so easy to forget that we are also animals and that we evolved in an environment that was dramatically different from the one we are in today,” Gazzaley says. 

Today the brain must contend with an intense, hyperactive, high-tech world constantly bombarding it with information every second. Something that has flipped the status quo between the competing forces of what the scientist calls “top-down and bottom-up attention”; the former is driven by goals, the latter by external influences. Given how we live inside virtual worlds, constantly scrolling in search of dopamine, the latter has now turned into ‘noise’ and ‘interference’. The question to ask then is what happens when you take that ancient brain and place it in this modern world? 

A collective cognitive decline is imminent if not already underway as the very technologies intended to inform and educate have become whirlpools of distraction. “We are all cruising along on a superhighway of interference,” he writes in his book Distracted Mind:Ancient Brains in a high-tech world. But could these tools of distraction be re-designed to become instruments of cognitive repair? Gazzaley has proven they can.

The world of “experiential medicine” 

Gazzaley calls this brave new world ‘experiential medicine’ — an exciting new frontier for sciences like psychedelics, augmented reality, electric stimulation. Even something as straightforward as meditation. A virtual, coded, and gamified way of improving cognition, repairing damage and re-tooling the brain’s emptied chambers of attention and focus. The implications are huge. These games can improve memory, could eventually address brain disorders and maybe even reverse dementia. 

At SYNAPSE 2025, Gazzaley will break down the ‘distraction dystopia’, the storm of data pills and content windmills blowing through it, the young and old brains caught in its midst, the science of ‘experiential medicines’ and how we can “take back control” of our attention. 

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