Here is ques­tion 8 of 25 from Brain Fit­ness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Ques­tions. To down­load the com­plete ver­sion, please click here.

Ques­tion:
Why are com­puter pro­grams bet­ter than paper-based ones or sim­ply attend­ing a class in person?

Key Points:

• Paper-based and in-person classes are good and bet­ter than not doing any­thing men­tally stimulating.
• Like other recre­ational activ­i­ties, classes are hard to con­trol for using var­i­ous men­tal mus­cles and pro­vid­ing increas­ing chal­lenge and nov­elty over time.

Answer:
Tak­ing classes and read­ing can be great fun and an easy way to learn some­thing new. Learn­ing some­thing new is always good for your brain. It doesn’t even mat­ter so much what you learn as the fact that you are engag­ing your brain and chal­leng­ing it.

The trou­ble with classes is much the same as the trou­ble with using only recre­ational games for brain fit­ness. While they offer many ben­e­fits, the actual “work­out” can vary dra­mat­i­cally. What if you get a ter­ri­ble teacher, or the class turns out to be way below your abil­ity – or way above it. Sud­denly, what seems like a good idea either doesn’t chal­lenge or doesn’t sup­port you (not under­stand­ing some­thing is stress­ful). Also, no sin­gle class can cover all, or even most, of the areas of your cog­ni­tion. In the end, it will cover an arbi­trary, and prob­a­bly some­what nar­row, set of func­tions but not other functions.

When you use one of the computer-based pro­grams, there is gen­er­ally an assess­ment to deter­mine your cur­rent abil­ity and where to start exer­cis­ing. From there, the com­puter instantly checks your per­for­mance and adjusts the chal­lenge so that you are always pushed just a lit­tle bit harder. Hard enough to keep you work­ing, but not so hard that you become frus­trated and give up.

Fur­ther­more, the computer-based pro­grams have an almost unlim­ited capa­bil­ity to exer­cise the same skills with an end­less vari­ety of stim­uli. This means you get to prac­tice the skill over time, but in a way that allows it to gen­er­al­ize ver­sus merely becom­ing good at play­ing a spe­cific game and noth­ing else.

By all means, take classes, read, and do engag­ing things you enjoy. It’s all good for your brain. Just don’t get lulled into think­ing you’ve got a com­plete brain fit­ness pro­gram when you don’t.

Con­clu­sion:
You must use your brain in order to improve it, and learn­ing new things using more of your brain than doing the same old thing. So, do take classes and do things that inter­est you, but look at adding a com­put­er­ized brain fit­ness pro­gram to ensure you’re get­ting a com­plete workout.

Fur­ther Reading:

• Com­puter pro­grams we recommend
• Mah­ncke HW, Con­nor BB, Appel­man J, et al. Mem­ory enhance­ment in healthy older adults using a brain plasticity-based train­ing pro­gram: a ran­dom­ized, con­trolled study. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2006;103:12523–8.
• Scarmeas N, Stern Y. Cog­ni­tive reserve and lifestyle. J Clin Exp Neu­ropsy­chol. 2003;25:625–33.
• Tar­raga L, Boada M, Modi­nos G, et al. A ran­domised pilot study to assess the effi­cacy of an inter­ac­tive, mul­ti­me­dia tool of cog­ni­tive stim­u­la­tion in Alzheimer’s dis­ease. J Neu­rol Neu­ro­surg Psy­chi­a­try. 2006;77:1116–21.

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