Train the brain
Rob Gronbeck treats the brain the way a coach treats a body — as something you can measure, train and improve. In Melbourne he runs the Brain Room, a space inspired partly by the Flow Genome Project and the cognitive work done with Navy SEALs. He trains athletes, people with attention or brain disorders, and anyone who simply wants to think more sharply.
His premise is disarmingly simple: “the more you focus, the better you get at focusing.” At the molecular level, practice thickens the myelin around the axons; behaviourally, attention is a skill that grows with use. The hard part isn’t believing it — it’s measuring it. That’s where his tools come in.
The centrepiece is NeuroTracker, a program that trains visual tracking speed, peripheral vision and anticipation. Track fast-moving targets and you get better at reacting and predicting — on a sports field, or just catching the glass before it hits the floor instead of after. Marek and Alek did a session themselves.
And here is the part that matters for longevity. Cognition — fluid intelligence, working memory, processing speed — tends to decline with age, and Rob thinks our sedentary lives drive a lot of that (the brain, greedy for a quarter of our calories, “chunks itself down” when unused). But the research he points to is hopeful: adults aged 55–65, after a few weeks on NeuroTracker, had part of their brain performing within the norms of 25-year-olds. Not younger overall — but proof the decline isn’t a one-way street.
