Introducing the Go/NoGo Task: A New Way to Assess Cognitive Readiness with Rewire
At Rewire, we are constantly striving to provide you with the best tools to enhance your performance and optimize your readiness. That’s why we are thrilled to announce the latest addition to our Readiness Assessment: the Go/NoGo task. Let’s dive into the details:
What is the Go/NoGo Task?
The Go/NoGo task is a response inhibition task in which your goal is to rapidly identify and respond to the “Go” stimuli (blue shape) as fast as possible, while withholding your response to the “NoGo” stimuli (red shape). Rewire measures your reaction time when correctly responding to the Go stimuli, lapses in concentration, and the number of incorrect responses (misses). Over a rolling 30-day period we’ll create a baseline and utilise that to provide a personalized analysis of daily cognitive readiness, helping you make well-informed training and recovery decisions.
Why is Cognitive Readiness Important?
Mental (or cognitive) fatigue impairs physical performance. This is something we all (likely) have anecdotal experience with – try training after a long hard day at work, it’s going to feel harder, and you’re not going to able to achieve your best. This was cemented within research with a landmark 2009 study by Samuele Marcora et al., providing initial evidence that ‘mental fatigue limits exercise tolerance in humans through higher perception of effort rather than cardiorespiratory and musculoenergetic mechanisms’ with many more studies since highlighting the negative effect that mental fatigue has on athletic performance.
What Can We Do About Low Cognitive Readiness?
The good news is that despite the negative impact that cognitive fatigue has on our performance, there are a variety of strategies that can mitigate the negative effect of cognitive fatigue. We’ve built these protocols into our Mindset Recovery system providing a way to optimize your state for workouts, sleep, focus, relaxation and more – with sessions utilising strategies like Binaural Beats, Guided Breathing, Self-Talk, Visualization, and Subliminal Priming. Our recommendation engine also provides a personalized recovery recommendation based on your current readiness state, key areas of need, and your goal.
Integrating the Go/NoGo Task into the Readiness Assessment
The Go/NoGo task seamlessly integrates into our Readiness Assessment, providing an alternative to the Reaction Time task. In addition to the cognitive assessment, our Readiness Assessment takes a holistic approach, encompassing cognitive, emotional, and physical domains. By combining multiple data points, including the results from the Go/NoGo task, heart rate monitoring, training load, and self-assessment questions, Rewire provides you with a well-rounded assessment of your overall readiness.
Get Started with Rewire and the Go/NoGo Task
If you’re already a member of Rewire, simply update your app and start a Readiness Assessment to select and use the Go/NoGo task. Please keep in mind that since the Go/NoGo task is a new task, we’ll need to calibrate your baseline independently to the reaction time test. This process is initially 4 days and improves over the course of a rolling 30-day period. During the 4-day calibration, your cognitive score will be based on Mental Load and Sleep. You can always switch back to the Reaction Time task via Settings->Readiness Assessment Preferences.
If you haven’t joined us yet, now is the perfect time. Sign up now and unlock your full potential