With Cogmed, a digital therapeutic program, Travis Pyscho Educational Services is helping patients build concentration, boost memory and increase problem-solving skills.

Improving the capacity of working memory can greatly impact quality of life. When working memory is further developed, it aids such things as concentration, complex problem solving and task completion.

The best part? Anyone can improve their working memory, and Mary Travis, PhD, can be the catalyst for change to make this happen.

Travis Psycho Educational Services, Inc. is based in Orlando and serves patients from childhood through adulthood. The practice specializes in Cogmed, a heavily researched digital therapeutic program targeting attention and memory improvement. 

“Working memory is like the learning engine of the brain. It’s the thing that makes learning happen,” Travis says. “When a high school student is working so hard and taking the SAT over and over and over, or being tutored over and over and over—if they would just stop, go back and build that working memory and attention, then all the rest of the stuff is going to work 100% better.”

Before opening her private practice, Travis was a teacher in both private and public schools. She then became a school psychologist in a public school system and, from there, went into private practice as a school psychologist. She holds a master’s degree in education and an educational specialist degree in school psychology. Her doctoral work focused on human development across the lifespan.

It was her years in the classroom that first inspired Travis to learn about brain-based education, which she explains is the idea that the brain can change itself.

“The brain is very plastic, and the model for the brain is more like a tropical rainforest. The things that are used grow, strengthen and survive,” Travis says.  

Brains can adapt if the landscape changes, Travis continues, but when there is a learning disability or an attention or working memory problem, you need to strengthen those capabilities by training the brain’s neurons and synapses to make other  paths.

“Or if they’re just weak, you can make them stronger by practicing. That’s why the Cogmed program is so structured,” Travis says.

CogMed was created by Torkel Klingberg, a neuroscientist at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden in the early 2000s. Travis learned about it in 2003, but only medical doctors had access to the program at first. When it became more widely available after Pearson Education purchased it seven years later, Travis qualified to use the program as a school psychologist with a PhD. It was revamped and streamlined around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, offering programs for ages 4 to 18  as well as adults. There are standard programs, as well as light programs for those who cannot handle words and numbers, such as someone who has suffered a stroke. The program for kids has a built-in Minecraft-like incentive program in which they can earn coins and build a digital world—and Travis encourages her adult Cogmed patients to build in their own reward system, too.

The program takes approximately 20 hours to complete in full, broken up into daily sessions, such as 50 minutes five times a week for five weeks. It’s possible to adjust the daily training length to 25 or 35 minutes, and to train three of four days per week instead. With these adjustments, it can take anywhere between five-to-13 weeks to complete Cogmed. Dr.Travis assesses advancement, issues progress reports and checks in once a week, although she is accessible to her patients at any point of the program. Parents can also check in on their child’s program at any point as well.

Each program is fully individualized and becomes more so as the student completes further sessions. Cogmed responds to what the student is doing and an algorithm tailors activities accordingly. It also curbs feelings of failure by moving on from sessions that may be a struggle.

This taps into Travis’ personal practice tagline, “positive psychology.”

“You want to be sure they don’t get so frustrated,” she says. “You’re always starting where they are and moving forward.”

Travis says her patients, as well as young patients’ parents, are amazed at how well Cogmed helps retrain their brain. They often want to continue the program, but while some do come back for more sessions later, the practice can’t take them right away as the program does not allow it.

“We want their brain to start to function on its own. You’ve trained it to have that good working memory and attention, and now you want it to start practicing what it learned on its own,” Travis says. “It’s a big jump in improvement.”

Travis Psycho Educational Services
Orlando
(407) 644-1522
TravisPS.com