DailyDirt: Playing Games With Your Brain

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Who wouldn't want to improve their brain function simply by playing some games or doing some brain training exercises? (If doing homework or reading counts as a brain training exercise, though, there are plenty of students who don't seem to want to better their brains.) Brain games are getting popular (have you seen any Lumosity ads recently?), and there are already plenty of educational software programs for skills like learning foreign languages. Some of these brain games claim to help you maintain your cognitive skills as you get older, and there's even some evidence that these claims could be true. Here are just a few examples of brain games that could help keep us all mentally fit for decades to come.

• A 10-year long study of older adults shows that certain kinds of brain training exercises can have long-lasting, measurable (and beneficial) effects. Hundreds of volunteers (2,832) were divided into four groups for a control group and groups receiving memory, reasoning, and speed-of-processing training -- and the groups with reasoning and speed training showed significantly less decline in those cognitive skills. Unfortunately, it looks like memory training doesn't slow memory loss as we age.... [url]
• People over 60 might want to consider playing some brain training video games for a few weeks. Researchers created a (kinda lame) video game called NeuroRacer, and elderly volunteers who played it showed improvements in memory, attention and multi-tasking abilities. [url]
• Brain training video games are a multi-million-dollar industry, but the actual benefits of commercial brain games have yet to be rigorously studied -- or if they've been studied, the games show little to no real benefits. Hopefully, game makers will eventually succeed in making games that match their brain-boosting claims. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: brain, cognitive abilities, education, elderly, games, memory, multitasking, neuroracer, retirement, training, video games
Companies: lumosity

DailyDirt: Real Brains

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Human brains are amazingly efficient compared to any computer built so far. Previously, we pointed out some projects to simulate brain activity in various ways. But there's nothing like the real thing. Here are just a few interesting links on detecting and improving our conscious grey matter.

• More studies show that a person's IQ doesn't remain constant throughout life. It seems strange to think that IQ couldn't change a bit with age (or with training exercises), and measuring "intelligence" in the first place isn't exactly an easy task to do. [url]
• A behavior therapist describes her experience training autistic kids to improve their cognitive abilities. Improve your fluid intelligence in just five easy steps! [url]
• Being able to distinguish various states of consciousness could be helpful to determine if/when patients with serious brain injuries might recover. A quantitative test to complement the Coma Recovery Scale measures brain activity via EEG signals, but it needs to be used on many more subjects before it can be considered a reliable diagnostic tool. [url]
• To discover more interesting articles on the human mind, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: brains, cognitive abilities, coma, consciousness, eeg, iq

DailyDirt: Animals Are Getting Smarter...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The more we study animals, the more we find out about their impressive cognitive abilities. And as we learn more about how other animal brains work, we might learn more about how our own minds think. Or perhaps someone will just figure out how to train parrots to pass CAPTCHA tests. In any case, here are a few interesting examples of animal intelligence.

• Chimps are the only other species, besides humans, that regularly throws things. It's presumably a pre-cursor to speech and communication. Chimps in captivity even throw things without any training, as the researchers say, "I've never in my life seen a chimp be given a banana for throwing shit at someone." [url]
• Until someone actually invents a dog collar that can translate dog barks into English, we'll have to study dog behavior and guess at how dogs think. Animal behaviorist John Bradshaw discusses his behavior guidebook for dogs and tips for training dogs. [url]
• Researchers have observed ravens in the wild using pointing gestures. "It's over there!" quoth the Raven. [url]
• To discover more interesting articles on the mind, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: animals, chimps, cognitive abilities, dogs, gestures, intelligence, ravens, smart animals