Monday, May 3, 2010

Does Brain Training Improve Cognitive Abilities?

Alvaro Fernandez of SharpBrains does a good job on his commentary about the results of a recent brain training experiment in Britain, in his article titled " BBC 'Brain Training ' Experiment: the Good, the Bad, the Ugly ."

The good is that brain games do not improve cognitive function in general. These games will help you improve at doing one particular task, but will not improve your overall brain health. For example, doing cross-word puzzles will help you improve at doing cross-word puzzles, but nothing else.

The bad of this experiment in Britain is that the experiment was poorly designed and lacked adequate quality control. The amount of training time was very low, and there was no quality control as participants did their testing at home with no supervision.

The ugly is that the researchers made a large conclusion from a single negative findings of a flawed experiment.

If people truly want to improve their cognitive abilities, I believe that they must seriously work at it. Simply playing games will not help much. We should focus on

Exercise-To-A-Healthier-Life.com

No comments:

Post a Comment