Did you read about the recent exper­i­ment where young chimps dis­played amaz­ing visual work­ing mem­ory capa­bil­ity, beat­ing humans?

- You can watch a short video here.

- Lumos Labs has released a very fun game to test your own skills: try out this Chimp Game!

Also, some very good recent news articles:

1) Is it worth going to the mind gym? (New Sci­en­tist). This is one of the best arti­cles we have read in a while (unfor­tu­nately requires subscription).

- “Bird­watch­ing is the brain­child of San Francisco-based Lumos Labs, just one of the dozens of com­pa­nies that have sprung up in recent months to cash in on the “brain-training” craze. Like most of its com­peti­tors, the the­ory behind …”

Com­ments: the arti­cle intro­duces read­ers to much of the research and sci­en­tists we dis­cuss in our blog, such as Torkel Kling­berg’s work and recent results from the IMPACT study. The arti­cle would have been even bet­ter had Daniel Gopher been inter­viewed on his work improv­ing cog­ni­tive per­for­mance of mil­i­tary pilots and bas­ket­ball players.

2) Inno­va­tion: Your Brain Needs Just as Much Exer­cise as Your Body (Fox Busi­ness Network)

- “The mar­ket, how­ever, is still small. Accord­ing to Alvaro Fer­nan­dez , who co-founded mar­ket research and con­sult­ing firm Sharp­Brains, which is focused solely on the field of brain fit­ness, in 2007 the mar­ket was val­ued at $225 mil­lion, which is up from $150 mil­lion in 2005. Fer­nan­dez thinks there is poten­tial for it to surge, reach­ing more than $2 bil­lion by 2016.”

Com­ments:  Very good arti­cle. Those esti­mates refer to the whole brain fit­ness soft­ware mar­ket to assess and train cog­ni­tive skills, includ­ing edu­ca­tion, con­sumer health, and clin­i­cal appli­ca­tions, not just “brain games” for adults. Also, for con­text, Amer­i­cans spend $16 bil­lion a year in health club mem­ber­ships (IHRSA, 2006): that’s why the reporter says “The mar­ket, how­ever, is still small”.

3) Six Ways to Stop Mem­ory Loss (Newsweek)

- “The research is begin­ning to bear fruit: it’s clear that a healthy lifestyle and men­tal exer­cise can mea­sur­ably improve cog­ni­tive functioning.”

- “Soft­ware has been used for years to help peo­ple who have suf­fered strokes or trau­matic brain injuries regain spe­cific men­tal abil­i­ties. Healthy folks have their choice of a host of prod­ucts, includ­ing one, Posit Science’s Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram, whose effec­tive­ness is backed by a study pub­lished in the Pro­ceed­ings of the National Acad­emy of Sci­ences in 2006. Posit found that healthy peo­ple over the age of 60 tested about 10 years younger on stan­dard­ized tests after using the prod­uct. Even play­ing Sudoku helps keep your mind in shape. For more soft­ware check out SharpBrains.com, which pro­motes science-based cog­ni­tive training.”

Com­ment: First, we are hon­ored Newsweek offered our site as a resource. A clar­i­fi­ca­tion: when some­one says “10 years younger on stan­dard­ized tests”, we need to under­stand that doesn’t mean “your brain gets 10 years younger” or sim­i­lar. It means that our per­for­mance in that one very spe­cific cog­ni­tive skill (out of dozens of them), in the case of the study men­tioned above audi­tory pro­cess­ing and audi­tory mem­ory, improves by a sig­nif­i­cant percentage.

4) Figaro! Figaro! Train­ing the Mul­ti­task­ing Brain (New York Times)

- “But now I fear I just have a lazy untrained brain. Some other men  musi­cal con­duc­tors  mul­ti­task just fine, and it is pos­si­ble that this skill can be learned if you’re just dili­gent enough to rewire your brain, accord­ing to a study pub­lished in Neu­roRe­port by researchers at Wake For­est Uni­ver­sity and the Uni­ver­sity of North Car­olina at Greensboro.”

- Com­ment: the key for “cog­ni­tive train­ing” is well-directed and intensely prac­ticed men­tal exer­cise. There are sev­eral vehi­cles for that, from low-tech (med­i­ta­tion, cog­ni­tive ther­apy) to high-tech (such as computer-based pro­grams). And, as that report notes, musi­cal train­ing. Each type of exer­cise is a dif­fer­ent “tool” that may enable us to improve spe­cific cog­ni­tive skills.

Can you recall any expe­ri­ence when “men­tal exer­cise” enabled you to improve some men­tal abil­i­ties? what did you do? what did you notice?

Enjoy the weekend

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