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James Fung
United States
Berkeley
California
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Like many people on this site, I care a lot about my brain. I make my living using it, most of my hobbies use it heavily, and thought of me losing my mental abilities and/or personality to old age or disease fills me with dread. However, when I asked my neurologist friend about programs like Brain Age, which claim to keep your mental muscle lean and fit, she said the research is still out. One thing that researchers do agree on is repeating training on an exercise will improve your performance for that exercise. Which means using Brain Age daily, you will see an improvement in mental arithmetic, short-term memory, basic word games, but it's questionable if it will improve your brain health 30 years down the road.
I know I should back this up with links to peer-reviewed journals, but I trust my friend on this.
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Caleb Wynn
United States
Cumming
Georgia
I love Nintendo as well!
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Cool. The sudoku is fun. At least that part of the game is valuable, even if none of the other stuff is. I haven't touched this game in quite a while though...
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James Fung
United States
Berkeley
California
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Sidewynnder wrote: Cool. The sudoku is fun. At least that part of the game is valuable, even if none of the other stuff is. I haven't touched this game in quite a while though...
I forget, does the sudoku portion of the game include features to help solve the grid (i.e. being able to mark possible numbers or eliminated possibilities)? That's the main thing I'd want in a sudoku application. On the other hand, I prefer playing kenken (a.k.a. kendoku) these days.
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Caleb Wynn
United States
Cumming
Georgia
I love Nintendo as well!
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Yes, it does indeed. That is the best part about it. I haven't booted it up in a while and my brother has my DS right now, but I know you can mark possible numbers. You may be able to mark eliminated possibilities. Not sure though.
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Randy Cox
United States
Clemson
South Carolina
1024x768 works just fine - Don't Wide the Site!
The Back Alley gets no respect.
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But, pretty much every game on this site has "questionable utility," yet using your brain seems better than not doing so.
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James Fung
United States
Berkeley
California
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Randy Cox wrote: But, pretty much every game on this site has "questionable utility," yet using your brain seems better than not doing so.
The difference being not every game claims to be edutainment designed by cognitive scientists to keep your brain fit.
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All I can say is that it definately can't hurt, only help.
Those types of game help engage the brain so in a way, you are flexing your "mental muscle".
As for those types of games helping to keep your brain physically fit is entirely different matter but there is some correlation that keeping your brain engaged can help make the onset of certain memory related symptoms from advancing too quickly.
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Ryan Moore
United States
Clarkston
US
Migraine day... like a mole in my brain
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According to brain researcher Sylvia Bunge at UC Berkly, these type of training game do improve your brain.
 She has used her finding to develop a regimen for both reasoning training and speed training using games like this.
Here: http://bungelab.berkeley.edu/
Spread the good news. Video games are good for you.
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Ryan Moore
United States
Clarkston
US
Migraine day... like a mole in my brain
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http://bungelab.berkeley.edu/Publications/2010_Mackey_DevSci...
This particular study used a mix of board games and popular video games including Qwirkle, Set, Big Brain Academy, Super Monkey Ball, and Mario Kart.  You have to love it.
"We found that a mere 8 weeks of playing commercially
available games can lead to large improvements on
standard cognitive tests... in children. To our
knowledge, this study provides the first clear evidence of
a double-dissociation in cognitive gains between two
training programs in children..."
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