'Brain Age'-style Games Don't Work, Try Exercising Instead

nytimes.com — Practice can certainly make people better at sudoku puzzles, but there seems to be no benefit to general mental fitness. One form of training, however, has been shown to maintain and improve brain health — physical exercise. Nov 9, 2007 View in Crawl 4

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crazyhorse13 Nov 9, 2007

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Note that the author doesn't cite any data to back himself up. Also, just what kind of "exercise are we talking about here? I doubt that lifting weights and running through the neighborhood have the same influences on your mental agility or whatever. Dugg down for inaccuracy.

unfilterthought Nov 9, 2007

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I guess he doesnt realize a lot of the actual Brain Age games involve, you know...math.

blakestah Nov 9, 2007

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Such studies are partly done, and partly being done. See recent work in PNAS by Henry Mahncke. They took aged subjects and engaged them in specific executive function training tasks, and did a broad evaluation of age-related cognitive decline before and after. And, you know what, it WORKS! You also cannot deny the positive impacts of exercise, with a caveat. The best studies use 30 minutes of VERY HIGH INTENSITY aerobic exercise three times a week. In other words, you hop on the stationary bike, warm up for ten minutes, peg your heart rate for 30 minutes, and warm down for five minutes. And then you get very positive impacts on age-related decline. Surprisingly, it works great on major depression too - in some ways better than antidepressants (see JA Blumenthal work). HTH

roberth Nov 9, 2007

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So I should play Wii sports instead?And Nintendo could combine exercise and brain training if they wanted to!

jkaiseresquire Nov 22, 2007

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At least the games are fun to play!

m98076 Jan 23, 2008

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I think so too...<a class="user" href="http://websuduko.blogspot.com/2008/01/web-sudoko-web-suduko-web-soduko-web.html">http://websuduko.blogspot.com/2008/01/web-sudoko-w ...</a>

fitbrains May 28, 2009

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I have been working in the brain fitness space since 2001 and we have come along way. There has been significant scientific studies over the last 5 years that illustrate how we can maintain and develop our cognitive skills through our lifespan. Our company has started to launch pilots that provide more efficacy to our software. I truly believe the next 5 years will see a lot of positive developments in this area.Michaelwww.fitbrains.com

Closed Account Jan 4, 2012