Courtesy Photo | – The Brazilian Military East Training Center team demonstrates the utility of the...... read more read more
Dr. Brad Fawver, research psychologist at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research - West, presented preliminary results from an ongoing brain endurance training research project at the International Symposium on Physical Training in Rio de Janeiro.
Dr. Fawver and Maj. Osgood, Deputy Director of WRAIR-West, joined more than 100 scientists, coaches, athletes, and military members with specialties including physical fitness, nutrition, mental health, and sleep at the Brazilian Army Research Institute of Physical Fitness, known by their Portuguese language acronym as IPCFEx. Dr. Fawver’s presentation, one of two English-language talks, covered past, current, and future research aimed at incorporating brain endurance training into the physical training regimens to enhance performance and resilience for athletes and service members.
“Early studies on brain endurance training showed incredible promise and attracted the attention of leadership at WRAIR-West,” Dr. Fawver said of the project’s origin. “Our soldiers already have existing physical training and testing programs, but almost none of the psychological and resilience building programs are integrated with physical exercise. It was an obvious opportunity to see if brain endurance training principles could provide them with an additional benefit without extra training time.”
The team at WRAIR-West incorporated brain endurance training in the form of cognitive exercises, such as puzzles and arithmetic, in-between bouts of physical exercise sets, like weightlifting, or during aerobic exercise like running. These cognitive exercises increase mental fatigue and force the exerciser to train under that mental fatigue as a form of conditioning.
“It’s not the actual tasks that are important, it’s that the tasks induce mental fatigue,” explained Dr. Fawver. “Brain endurance training is like wearing a mental weighted vest during exercise, and over time your brain and body acclimate to the combined mental and physical stress.”
Results from WRAIR-West’s first study using brain endurance training during running exercise show that this intervention significantly improved performance under fatigue compared to a control group.
“We actually saw twice the improvement on physical endurance tests for those receiving a working memory demand during exercise compared to those who did not,” said Dr. Fawver. “The control group improved by 12%, but the brain endurance training group improved by 25%. Similarly, the brain endurance training group showed double the reduction in self-reported exertion during exercise.”
These findings are the basis for a new collaboration between WRAIR-West and IPCFEx, which moved to the next phase during Dr. Fawver and Maj. Osgood’s recent visit to Brazil. In addition to their participation in the symposium, WRAIR-West toured the IPCFEx facilities, engaged in training and testing demonstrations, and spoke with stakeholders to prepare for the new research project.
“IPCFEx has unique capabilities that provide opportunity to expand our study of brain endurance training in different populations and operational environments” explained Dr. Fawver. “For instance, we’re applying novel tests on marksmanship, as well as the Brazilian military combat track. It’s a maze used to simulate engagement in dense jungle and urban environments that test threat neutralization and medical decision making.”
As the project proceeds to its next phase, both WRAIR-West and IPCFEx are preparing and recruiting to study how brain endurance training can be used to optimize and enhance the resilience of service members experiencing mental fatigue in austere environments.
“Physical training is a critical component of warfighter readiness, but science shows that it’s not the body that quits first, it’s the mind. When you don’t have the resilience to push through stress and fatigue, you don’t typically perform as well under pressure.” Dr. Fawver further clarified, “There is a lot of emphasis on building resilience and different programs and approaches to developing psychological skills, but the nice part about a brain endurance training approach is that you don’t need to teach service members to act and feel differently, they are different because of how they’ve trained.”
| Date Taken: | 03.07.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 03.07.2025 15:19 |
| Story ID: | 492284 |
| Location: | RIO DE JANEIRO, BR |
| Web Views: | 138 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, WRAIR-West collaborates with the Brazilian Army to optimize Warfighter readiness, by Zeke Gonzalez, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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