An interesting recent article announcesPupils to start day with Nintendo Brain Training(UK’s Daily Telegraph). Some quotes:

- “Children at 16 primary schools are to start each day by playing on a Nintendo games console, it was disclosed yesterday.”

- “The pupils will play “brain training” exercises before lessons after a pilot scheme at a school in Dundee found that it boosted learning ability.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Today we are traveling to Japan. Go Hirano is a serial Japanese entrepreneur who has been exploring neuroscience-based opportunities in Japan, having recently created the company NeuWell (neuroscience for wellness). NeuWell and SharpBrains are exploring opportunities together to bring world-class programs to Japan, and we thought that SharpBrains’ blog readers may be interested in learning about trends in Japan.

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Key take-aways:

- People in Japan devour any product with brain-related claims

- But there has been a recent backlash against children videogames, so game developers have started to focus on older audiences with (mostly unproven) brain-health-improving games

- The market is ripe for programs with proven research and tangible benefits

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AF: Hirano-san, tell us a bit about yourself and how you became interested in applied neuroscience.

GH: after helping launch one of the first DSL providers in Japan, I started to wonder what the next bigger value for society would be. I have always been fascinated by brain research, so I started to explore opportunities to help bring to market neuroscience-based programs to help students do better in exams, and adults age in brain-friendly ways.

AF: what is the state of Brain Fitness and Brain Training in Japan? what are the most popular applications so far?

GH: I think people understand the concepts of Brain Fitness and Brain Training. If one method or product/service sounds a bit scientific there are people who would try it for fun and curiosity. However, Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s now exercise our Frontal Lobes (that deal with working memory and attention, among other things) and Parietal Lobes (visual interpretation). (Basic brain anatomy here)

Quick! Count the number of times the number “6″ appears below (you may need to scroll down).

Then, count the total of both “3″s and “7″s, trying to add the total number of both as you see either (this is, don’t just count all the “3″s, and then the “7″s)

1234467889974674657865876576576 3576573625432657346578436578342 2732188582735827456724687343828 7672878682768723682376783768267 2647648823178346432764876774653 7436574386581483627868653873465

The Answer appears as a comment below. The most important thing here is not to get the right answer, but to try. This type of exercise has been used by the military to improve attention for decades (now there are more advanced, computer-based, tools, but this keeps being fun).