You’ve probably heard about these Brain Training games. Do they really help you to keep your mind sharp? Will they prevent cognitive decline or slow the effects of alzheimer’s disease? In this episode I review some recent studies on the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of these popular games.
Brain Games Research
- A nice review of the brain training research can be found in this excellent book, "The Invisible Gorilla"
- Owen, A.M., Hampshire, A., Grahn, J.A., Stenton, R., Dajani, S. Burns, A. S., Howard and Ballard, C.G (2010). Putting brain training to the test, Nature, 465, 775-779.
- Colcombe, S. and Kramer, A.F. (2003). Fitness effects on the cognitive function of older adults. Psychological Science, 14(2), 125-130.
- Papp, K.V., Walsh, S.J. and Snyder, P.J. (2009). Immediate and delayed effects of cognitive interventions in healthy elderly: A review of current literature and future directions. Alzheimer’s & Dementia, 5, 50-60.
- Willis, S.L., Tennstedt, S.L., Marsiske, M. Ball, K., Elias, F., Koepke, K.M., Morris, J.N., Rebok, G.W., Unverzagt, F.W., Stoddard, A.M., and Wright, W. (2006). Long-term effects of cognitive training on everyday functional outcomes in older adults. Journal of the American Medical Association, 296 (23).
- Smith, G.E., Housen, P., Yaffe, K., Ruff, R., Kennison, R.F., Mahncke, H.W. and Zelinski, E.M. (2009). A cognitive training program based on principles of brain plasticity: Results from the improvement in memory with Plasticity-based adaptive cognitive training (IMPACT) Study. The American Geriatrics Society.
- For a different perspective, read this article by CogMed a company that makes brain training tools. You’ll see how they critique the Owen, et. al study (above). Putting “brain training” to the test – and about time. They recommend that you read the research that they have conducted. If you do so, do you think their research is more convincing that those cited above?
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ve been thinking about brain training games and maybe you need a different way of exercising or a catalyst for transfer.
Usually person would just train their normal way of thinking. But what if those games/exercises suggest another way of thinking.
For example a game where you count birds. Usual approach would be to just estimate or count one-by-one. Eventually you’ll get faster and better but no significant improvement.
If you change your technique to counting-by-groups there is an significant improvement. (That means you group birds into 10 or more and start counting 10, 24, 37 and so on.) This teaches you a new way of thinking and maybe now it transfers to other things like adding/subtracting numbers.
Now a catalyst for a transfer would show how to apply this skill. For example 4*24 is same as counting 4 times group of 24 birds. So 24, 48, 72, 96.
What do you think about this?
I might be in the minority, but I’d prefer having fewer, longer, more in-depth podcasts rather than more frequent, shorter ones. I appreciate hearing not only conclusions, but the reasons behind them.
Just as an example, in this podcast you concluded that brain training games don’t work, and cited several studies. Then you went on to recommend physical exercise to improve mental abilities, without any cites. I would have appreciated hearing any research to support that recommendation.
Thanks for letting me air my opinion. I love your podcast.
Egon: I have to tell you that honestly I’m not following this idea of “catalyst for transfer”.
Isabel: Yours is the first feedback on the length issue, so we’ll see what else I hear, but you make a good point. I did read a good article which showed the effectiveness of physical exercise on cognitive ability (see Colcombe and Kramer above) but I didn’t discuss it because I tried to keep the episode below 20 minutes.
Maybe you’re right: I mean, if people want headlines they can get headlines – but where you can go these days to get some in-depth information? Maybe I should stick to the longer format.
I’ll let you know what else I hear in the next episode.
The usual approach of just playing the game would just strengthen the specific pathways needed to do the exercise. The different way of solving the exercise would develop new pathways. The catalyst would show how to use the new pathways for different tasks.
When you learn how to count birds fast with grouping, it might not transfer to math skills. A catalyst would be needed for the transfer of skill. Basically it’s a method how to apply the newly acquired skill (counting groups) in a different field. So when I want to calculate
36 * 3 i’ll count 36, 72, 108.
An other example would be memory games. If you also show how to remember better and use mnemonics etc. and also how to use them in real life then the memory games should (just a guess) be just as effective as just learning mnemonics.