Fun quick article, titled Review: Latest Brain-Teasing Video Games, on Brain Training, “Nintendo Brain Age”, “Big Brain Academy”, “Hot Brain”, ”Brain Boost”, “Brain Genius”, “Brain Juice”, “Brain Challenge”, “Mind Quiz”…

Please remember to use our checkists on How to Select the Right Brain Fitness Program-short checklist or the full length version-, if you are looking for real benefits beyond entertainment.

 

Some great posts:

The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids in New York Magazine (via Mind Hacks)

• “One group was praised for their intelligence (”You must be smart at this”), while the others were praised for their effort (”You must have worked really hard”). This simple difference had a startling effect.”
• “Children who were praised for their effort were more likely to choose a harder test when given a choice, were less likely to become disheartened when given a test they were guaranteed to fail, and when finally given the original tests again, their marks improved.”

Videogames Improve Vision by Rewiring Your Brain in Scientific American

A new edition of the Brain Blogging Blog Carnival.

And please remember to submit posts to the next edition of the brain fitness Blog Carnival.

The Wall Street Journal has a great article today, Putting Brain Exercises to the Test (requires subscription), that compares 6 different computer-based brain exercise programs along ease-of-use, fun, and science behind. We at SharpBrains conducted a very similar exercise last year, coming to basically the same conclusions.

The article compares Nintendo Brain Age, MyBrainBuilder, MyBrainTrainer, HappyNeuron, (CogniFit Science) MindFit and Posit Science brain fitness 2.0, and ends up recommending Read the rest of this entry »

“…across the country, brain health programs are springing up, offering the possibility of a cognitive fountain of youth.”

“From “brain gyms” on the Internet to “brain-healthy” foods and activities at assisted living centers, the programs are aimed at baby boomers anxious about entering their golden years and at their parents trying to stave off memory loss or dementia.”

Keep reading today’s New York Times article As Minds Age, What’s Next? Brain Calisthenics.

The article also refers to Posit Science, HappyNeuron, MyBrainTrainer, and other companies, insurers and residences offering brain fitness programs/brain exercise software.

And includes a note of caution: “This is going to be one of the hottest topics in the next five years — it’s going to be huge,” said Nancy Ceridwyn, co-director of special projects for the American Society on Aging. “The challenge we have is it’s going to be a lot like the anti-aging industry: how much science is there behind this?”

You can learn more by checking our longer post yesterday, New Research on How to Maintain a Sharp Brain, where we commented on yesterday’s NYT Editorial, the results from the JAMA study and an IHRSA newsletter to fitness and health clubs that we authored.

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 »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

Jonah Lehrer from the Frontal Cortex blog has written a good article on the Nintendo Wii, William James and Antonio Damasio over at seedmagazine.com, How the Nintendo Wii will get you emotionally invested in video games.

A couple of quotes

- While Sony and Microsoft exercise your thumbs, Nintendo gives you a full body workout.

- “This is the irony of the Wii: although it can’t compete with the visual realism of Sony and Microsoft, it ends up feeling much more realistic.”

In a different context, but it reminds me of our conversation with Prof. Gopher about the need for cognitive fidelity in Brain Fitness Programs.

Alvaro

Thanks to MindHacks for the link to a good Washington Post article, “Pumping Neurons”.

A couple of quotes:

Recent research shows that the brain remains plastic, or basically trainable, throughout life. In a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2002, significant percentages of the 2,802 participants age 65 and older who trained for five weeks for about 2 1/2 hours per week improved their memory, reasoning and information-processing speed.

When we learn, we create physical changes inside our heads. By practicing a skill, we repeatedly stimulate the same area of the brain, which strengthens existing neural connections and creates new ones. Over time, we can become more cognitively efficient, using fewer neurons to do the same job. And the more often we fire up certain mental circuits, the easier it is to get them going again.

Read the rest of this entry »

New Nintendo brain games will be launched in Europe shortly, with titles such as The Professor’s Brain Trainer: Logic, the Professor’s Brain Trainer: Memory, and Ubisoft’s Mind Quiz, all trying to build on the success of Brain Age.

Interesting that the article calls them “intelligence-testing games”. We have seen no published or in-the-works scientific data supporting that those games are in fact any good for our Brain Fitness, either as Brain Fitness Programs or Brain Fitness Assessments, but fun they are. As the Brain Fitness market matures, we will need to differentiate between Brain Fitness Programs with published data and clear, measurable, results, and Games whose main value lies in entertainment.

You can read our previous Brain Coach Answers post on why crosswords and sudoku (or Nintendo BrainAge) aren’t sufficient brain exercise.