Welcome to your brain

Posted by Ricki Sharpe on November 14, 2007  
Filed Under Cognitive, Current Reading

Games that improve brain performance are a booming business. In the US, consumers are expected to spend $80 million this year on brain exercise products. Advertising for these products often emphasises the claim that they are designed by scientists or based on scientific research.

However, Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang, authors of Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life, are a little less charitable. “We might call them inspired by science - not to be confused with actually proven by science.”

In an op-ed in the The New York Times, they explore the current state of our knowledge on brain games:

Environmental enrichment does improve mental function in laboratory animals. Rodents and monkeys that get playmates or toys learn to complete a variety of tasks more easily, at all ages. They also have larger brains, larger brain cells and more synaptic connections than animals raised alone in standard cages.

However, laboratory animals rarely need to search for food or avoid predators. In contrast, most of us get plenty of everyday stimulation in activities like finding a new address, socializing with friends or navigating the treacherous currents of office politics.

Animal enrichment research may be telling us something important not about the positive effects of stimulation, but about reversing the negative effects of deprivation.

Another line of evidence cited by marketers comes from studies of elderly people who improve certain skills by practising a challenging computer-based task. Although most programs work to some extent, the gains tend to be specific to the trained task.

Practice can certainly make people better at sudoku puzzles or help them remember lists more accurately. The improvement can even last for years. Similarly, people tend to retain skills and knowledge they learned thoroughly when they were younger.

Unless the activities span a broad spectrum of abilities, though, there seems to be no benefit to general mental fitness. The belief that any single brain exercise program late in life can act as a quick fix for general mental function is almost entirely faith-based.

One form of training, however, has been shown to maintain and improve brain health — physical exercise.

In humans, exercise improves what scientists call executive function, a set basic functions like processing speed, response speed and working memory, the type used to remember a house number while walking from the car to a party.

Executive function starts to decline when people reach their seventies. But elderly people who have been athletic all their lives have much better executive function than sedentary people of the same age.

When inactive people get more exercise, even starting in their seventies, their executive function improves, as shown in a recent meta-analysis of eighteen studies. One effective training program involves just thirty to sixty minutes of fast walking several times a week.

Exercise is also strongly associated with a reduced risk of dementia late in life. People who exercise regularly in middle age are one-third as likely to get Alzheimer’s disease in their seventies as those who did not exercise. Even people who begin exercising in their sixties have their risk reduced by half.

So instead of spending money on computer games or puzzles to improve your brain’s health, invest in a gym membership. Or just turn off the computer and go for a brisk walk.

Sandra Aamodt is the editor in chief of Nature Neuroscience. Sam Wang is an associate professor of molecular biology and neuroscience at Princeton.

How well do you know your brain? Try this short quiz.


Print This Post Print This Post

Similar Posts

Tags

| | | | .

Comments

Leave a Reply