“The idea was you could use video games to have a positive impact on human behavior. “Now that I kind of look back, the lab was doing the early days of brain training before Lumosity was a startup,” he said. He moved on to Temple University’s neurocognition lab and that’s where the seed for the company was really planted. Then he started doing research at Fox Chase Cancer Center’s Behavioral Medicine Department. And we were trying to like reverse engineer it and figure out how it works. But it’s like this weird alien computer that we didn’t understand. “It was like the brain was just the ultimate computer. “The first week of that class, I completely fell in love,” Mackey said. He transferred to Temple University in Philadelphia, and on a lark, he took a neuroscience course as an elective. In his late 20s, he decided to go to college and get a computer science degree, starting at a local community college. The worst job I had was selling used cars.” I did everything from waiting tables, bartending … I worked midnights in a plastic factory.

So I started as a hobbyist game developer in high school, and obviously, college was not in the cards with me. “But I just thought it would be really cool if I could make my own game. “I didn’t realize I needed to know a little math and science to pull it off,” Mackey said. He loved video games and taught himself to code in high school because he wanted to make his own games. “What’s weirder is that I ever became a scientist and started a game-focused company. “I’m technically a neuroscientist by trade, but a lifelong gamer who has lost jobs and relationships by playing too many video games,” he said.

Growing up in Ohio, he wasn’t expecting to go to college. In high school, he said he wasn’t a good student and he graduated with a 1.8 grade-point average. That investment success is pretty mind blowing for Mackey, who has had periods in his life when he wasn’t motivated or performing.

Does aim lab help