I've just read this article in a Canadian newspaper and thought you might enjoy it.
TRALEE PEARCE (author's name)
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
January 29, 2009 at 9:28 AM EST
That Nintendo brain-training game you're carrying around in your purse may be sparking some mental activity, but new evidence suggests your prefrontal cortex may be just as happy with a crossword puzzle or a good book.
While millions of trendy puzzle-based video games have been sold around the world on the premise that they can improve cognitive function - and even reverse the signs of an aging brain - there's nothing the "technological jewel" can do that low-tech alternatives can't, according to cognitive psychologist Alain Lieury of the University of Rennes 2 in France.
Dr. Lieury and his colleagues tested the impact of the electronic exercises over seven weeks on a sample of 67 10-year-olds split into four groups.
Two groups played the bestselling Brain Training game (known as Brain Age in North America) on Nintendo DS in addition to doing their regular school work. One group was given puzzles to do on paper, and a fourth group was given no extra work. Memory and math tests were given before and after the training period.
On the memory tests, which involved maps, the puzzles-only group showed a 33-per-cent improvement, but the Nintendo kids' performance dipped 17 per cent. The Nintendo and puzzle groups matched each other with a 10-per-cent rise in logic scores. In math, all four groups - even the ones with no extra work - showed roughly an 18-per-cent jump in scores.
Dr. Lieury says his research proves that the buzz around the Nintendo games and their creator, Japanese neuroscientist Ryuta Kawashima, is more about marketing than science. In the paper's conclusion, he writes that Dr. Kawashima joins a long list of "marchands de rêve" (dream merchants).
Dr. Kawashima's games are "not efficient," Dr. Lieury said in an e-mail interview.
"Nintendo should say clearly, 'It's a game, not a scientific test.' "
Dr. Lieury's work was published last month in the Bulletin de Psychologie.
Toronto neuroscientist Endel Tulving has not seen the games himself, but cautions that the activities are unlikely to be transferable to specific skills such as improving memory.
It's akin to hitting the gym for two hours a day and expecting to be good at all sports, says Dr. Tulving, chairman of the Rotman Research Institute.
Media reports of Dr. Lieury's study this week have spurred Nintendo lovers to fill comment boards in defence of the games. "It's not Nintendo's claim that Brain Age is somehow better than exercising your brain in other ways, just that it's more fun, and more convenient," one observer wrote on Wired magazine's games blog.
Another wrote: "Even if there were no measurable benefits (I believe there are), just using Brain Age makes people feel good about what they're doing. That's more than enough benefit in my book."
Some observers challenged Dr. Lieury's assertion that if the games don't work for 10-year-olds, they won't work for adults, a criticism echoed by some experts.
"There are many processes going on in the elderly that are qualitatively different than those going on in children," said Robert Sutherland, an expert in neurobiology and memory at the Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta.
Even people in their 40s and 50s don't produce new brain cells the way they did when they were children, he said. Everything from reading to exercise can stimulate blood flow to the brain and delay its deterioration.
The kids Dr. Lieury studied are at an age when they need little additional stimulation, he said. This may explain why the math scores improved in the group of children who had no additional training.
While Dr. Sutherland said the results might have been more robust in older people, he agrees with Dr. Lieury's general conclusions.
"These games are probably okay, but you're paying a lot of money when a walk in the park with friends would be even better," he said. "And free."
But don't rush to replace your Nintendo with a single alternative brain cure.
"I wouldn't get stuck on one thing. A lot of older people think that there's something magical about Sudoku or a crossword. There isn't," he says. "The kinds of activities that are helpful are only narrowed down by the imagination."
It comes down to the old adage: Use it or lose it.
"It's like there's no magic to enhancing the strength of your bicep; you actually have to use it."
