Salon.com published yesterday a thought-provoking article focused on Posit Science’s Brain Fitness Program, titled Buff Up Your Brain, that combined a) some pretty good analysis and great points about that specific program and justifiable (to a point) criticism of the commercial tone of a recent PBS Special, with b) the error of confusing a tree with the forest, that led the author to make several unwarranted claims regarding the field.

Computerized cognitive training has been around since way before Posit Science, and will be here way beyond Posit Science (and SharpBrains, and Salon.com), and their auditory processing product-featured in the PBS Special- is not, in our view, the most particularly impressive example. Well-directed cognitive exercise can enhance mental skills and transfer to real-life outcomes, acting as a good complementary tool, when used properly, to other lifestyle options and tools.

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Eliane writes a great post estimating the size of the Serious Games Market, building on the overall PriceWaterhouseCoopers report that seemed to indicate that the Global Video Game Market is Set to Explode.

Some quotes

• “The overall gaming audience continues to expand and become somewhat more female and older than in the past thanks to casual games and games becoming an “important part of culture” – which in my view would embed the Serious Games segment.”
• “Whereas the military was one of the first customers of Serious Games, it has been joined by a long line of users, including other government agencies, healthcare providers, schools (both K-12 and universities) and Fortune 500 companies (for team building, leadership training, sales training and product education, among others).”
• “This is my conservative estimate: the Serious Games market would be ranging between $200 – 400 million per year only in US, in 2007. “
• “There is now an emergent supply chain for Corporate Serious Games, with a number of corporations taking Read the rest of this entry »