Athletic & Human Performance
When most people think of sports, they think of physical abilities.
But human performance is mind over matter. Intense focus. Split-second decisions.
You play the game with your brain. Amazingly, brainpower also goes beyond individual players. High-performing teams are literally ‘on the same wavelength’ ─ electrical brain activity syncs up. Understanding this phenomenon can unlock new levels of success.
But sports also put the brain at risk. Repeated subconcussive and concussive impacts to the head can cause traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) that impair cognitive function and hurt mental health. In athletes of all ages, this can affect performance on and off the field. At Cogwear, our goal is to protect and improve performance by giving athletes better insight into their cognitive health.
Boost performance through data
Cogwear is developing the first real-time, clinical-grade physiological feedback for athletes. We’re partnering with Rezon, a UK-based company that offers athletic headbands designed to keep athletes in the game. Rezon’s Halos headbands reduce sports-related brain injuries and help players stay in top shape “above the neck”. Together, our companies are creating a new digitally-enabled protective headband for the ultimate competitive advantage.
Our goal is to make it easy for professional and amateur athletes of all ages and genders — across all types of sports — to measure and optimize their brainpower during competition. Athletes can also choose to share data with coaches or other contacts in real-time, giving individuals and teams a powerful new data-based approach to boost performance during competition.
A better solution than sideline concussion screenings
Why guess when a player is tired or injured? Cogwear can alert coaches when an athlete needs some recovery time. Typical concussion screenings are subjective and happen quickly on the sideline. They often fail to identify injuries. With Cogwear, players and coaches have actual data in the moment. Even if a player isn’t injured, Cogwear can still pick up on cues from the brain that indicate fatigue, anxiety, and focus.
Our technology will also provide coaches and league officials with a superior tool for traumatic brain injury (TBI) screening. Rezon wearables with Cogwear technology will be able to automatically report and measure head impacts for a data-based approach to screening.
Above-the-neck biofeedback
Some wearable technologies monitor physical feedback like heart rate variability as a measure of stress and anxiety. But Cogwear measures brainwaves to give athletes and coaches a far more accurate view of what’s happening inside the head. It also opens up new possibilities for measuring focus, fatigue and team synchrony — things that can’t be measured through smartwatches and heart monitors.
For example, Cogwear offers a 32% more accurate measurement of stress and 58% more accurate measurement of anxiety than wearables that rely on physical measures alone.
