Good WebMD 4-page arti­cle on Brain Fit­ness pro­grams for seniors. Check Keep­ing Your Brain Fit for Life:Software com­pa­nies are offer­ing new pro­grams that promise to keep your brain sharp as you get older.

Some quotes:

- “The notion of brain fit­ness has even invaded pop­u­lar cul­ture. In April, Nin­tendo released Brain Age, a Japanese-inspired, hand­held video game to help users’ minds stay active. While the game is mar­keted for all ages, the buy­ers — now num­ber­ing more than 655,000 in the U.S. — have mainly been older peo­ple, Nin­tendo of Amer­ica spokes­woman Amber McCol­lom writes in an email.”

- “Play­ers take a non­sci­en­tific test that cal­cu­lates a “brain age” for the pur­poses of the game. Through a series of puz­zles and other chal­lenges, they try to shave years or even decades off their brain age score. A catchy gim­mick, but peo­ple shouldn’t take it seri­ously. “The notion that there’s a brain age isn’t well accepted,” says Tim­o­thy Salt­house, PhD, a Uni­ver­sity of Vir­ginia psy­chol­ogy pro­fes­sor who is an expert on cog­ni­tive aging.”

- “…peo­ple shouldn’t con­sider brain train­ing as a magic cure to stop brain aging, experts say. While it may be pos­si­ble to improve mem­ory and learn­ing, Posit Sci­ence is care­ful not to claim that it can delay or pre­vent a decline in men­tal func­tion, Mah­ncke (Posit’s Research Head) says.”

- “We can’t coerce seniors to do what’s good for them,” Michel (Dakim’s founder) says. “We believe that Mary Pop­pins was cor­rect when she said that a spoon­ful of sugar makes the med­i­cine go down.” “You are see­ing the birth of this indus­try,” he says.

- “In the future, as media sto­ries have begun hint­ing, will this coun­try also see more men­tal ath­letes “pump­ing neu­rons” and doing “neu­ro­bics” well into their twi­light years?”

No quick or easy fixes. But train­ing “men­tal muscles”/ cog­ni­tive skills will one day be as com­mon­place as work­ing on those abdom­i­nals (and we hope more fun!)

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