Membar Launch Language Learning Software That May Help Prevent Alzheimer's
London (PRWEB) January 10, 2016 -- A new British-based software company has released software that it claims can improve health and potentially even prevent Alzheimer's.
The Windows-based software product is called Membar, and was primarily developed to assist those in learning a new language. At its simplest, the Membar software runs like a “ticker tape” bar across the top of your screen. The idea is that you load in words or phrases that you are finding it difficult to commit to long-term memory, and the software displays them (on an indefinite loop) across the top of the screen.
Membar founder and developer, Jeff Powell stated the following about the new product:
"As some people find when learning a new language, and as I have found from my own personal experience, there are some words which just seem to be easy to remember. They seem to just stick in the memory immediately. Unfortunately there are other words which people find it almost impossible to commit to memory, no matter how many times they read or hear them. If I take for example, the English word 'straight' – It must have taken me a week of daily repetition to commit it to memory as 'geradeaus' (German) in my mind!"
It’s these troublesome words where Membar can help with language learning. The idea is you load into the Membar a series of word pairs (Native Language: New Language) and the Membar passes them along the ticker-bar indefinitely."
The concept sounds simple and straightforward enough, but Membar also suggests there are health benefits.
"Membar actually does more than it at first appears. Firstly, the Membar runs at the top of the screen, and most of the time people concentrate and focus their vision towards the central area of their screen, directly inside their central vision. The Membar is actually running the majority of time outside of this area - in peripheral vision.
Now unfortunately as time has passed by, humans have become less reliant upon Peripheral vision. Early humans would have relied heavily on peripheral vision to hunt prey or to quickly identify oncoming danger. This is of course in contrast to today, where people spend most of their time using central vision, staring at computer screens and smartphones.
This leads to the question, “Is peripheral vision still important to modern humans?” – Well there are numerous benefits to exercising your peripheral vision. A less unequal balance of central and peripheral vision usage can reduce eye-strain and fatigue."
So whilst regular use of the Membar software can potentially strengthen peripheral vision, offering various health benefits, it's the suggestion of the prevention of Alzheimer's that really grabs your attention.
"There have even been scientific studies to suggest that regular exercise of peripheral vision can lead to the increased production of acetylcholine in the brain. What’s absolutely fascinating about this, is that studies have shown that people with memory-impairment based conditions such as Dementia and Alzheimer’s, have either very little, or no trace at all of acetylcholine in the brain. Some experts actually believe that by exercising your peripheral vision, leading to continued production of acetylcholine, you can actually prevent these conditions."
The obvious, and very real USP of Membar, is something called “Dual Memory Encoding” or DME – By exercising your peripheral vision, you slowly strengthen this area of vision, and as you do this, the images or words captured in peripheral vision become clearer, and your brain is able to more clearly process these images, and encode them to memory. This is exactly how speed readers are able to read so quickly. They are not reading word-by-word, they read line-by-line or in some cases, paragraph by paragraph.
As Membar states,
"When your store a word you have read in peripheral vision, it’s actually triggering a memory that’s being encoded separately to the exact same word that is stored in central vision.
This means a person encodes the memory in one location from peripheral vision, and one memory in another location from central vision – “Dual memory encoding” – Not only are you now twice a likely to be able to recall that word, but because the word is stored in two parts of the brain, the neuron connections in the brain will eventually connect these two together, resulting in a fully-committed long-term memory, available for immediate recall."
It is easy to demonstrate how the brain processes information gained from central vision differently to data process via peripheral vision, using a "peripheral drift illusion".
A peripheral drift illusion appears to be moving, when in fact it is a static image. The area of the image you focus on will show the image to be static, yet the brain process the image captured in peripheral vision differently, leading to the appearance of a moving image.
Some will find that the Membar software doesn't appear to work for them immediately. If your peripheral vision strength is poor, you will find the words looping on the Membar to almost appear blurry, and you will feel like you are not capturing them and encoding them to memory, however as time passes and your peripheral vision strengthens, you will actually find that you are committing the words to long-term memory, even though you aren’t directly reading them.
Membar claims that you are free to use your computer for other things (surf the net, email, blog, etc.) whilst your peripheral vision is doing the hard work, whilst arguably even improving your physical and mental state.
The software is currently priced at £9.99 for a life-time license, and a free 10-day trial can be obtained at http://www.membar.co.uk
Jeffrey Powell, Membar, http://www.membar.co.uk, +44 2030867650, [email protected]
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