Tech notes: Those brain games are good for us
May 15 2008 by Lewis Harrison, The Journal
REPORTS into technology’s effect on the brain tend to be pretty gloomy – but could computer games help keep it in shape?
Flick through the papers and you’ll read that emails harm our ability to distinguish between important and trivial information, and that mobile devices are ruining our memory power.
I can believe it. As we become overwhelmed with ever more things to do and remember, we’re becoming far more reliant on computer memory than the C:// drive in our heads.
Over the past couple of years, however, countless computer games have popped up claiming to boost your memory power, increase your intelligence or lower your brain age.
For instance, Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training game on Nintendo’s handheld DS console has been in the charts for 100 weeks, selling over 11 million copies. Spurred on by this commercial success, many more similar games are hitting the shelves.
But amid all these puzzles and tests, one question remains unanswered. Do they actually work?
Play one of these games for long enough and it’ll tell you you’re getting brighter. Even I managed to improve my score from a dire D to a respectable B+ after a few minutes on Brain Academy, which I borrowed from a colleague.
The critics say that if you take enough IQ tests, you’re bound to improve but it doesn’t prove that your intelligence or memory has developed.
They might want to listen to some of the evidence that’s finally emerging to support what the game manufacturers have been saying all along – that these computer games can indeed boost your brainpower.
Last month, a Swiss-American team of researchers found that computer- based tests, which challenge the individual according to ability, produced significant improvements, particularly in what it called fluid intelligence, or general problem- solving ability.
And late last year, one of Britain’s best-known scientists, Baroness Susan Greenfield, threw her weight behind another computer-based brain trainer, MindFit, which claims it can halt the mental decline associated with ageing.
It’s unlikely that our current state of information overload is going to slow down anytime soon, so perhaps we should start using these games regularly in order to cope.
You don’t even need to go near a gym to train your brain. Now that’s definitely worth bearing in mind.
Lewis Harrison is PR manager at Codeworks, a centre for digital innovation in the North East.
