Results Of An Investigation Into Improving Memory By Using Brain Training Games

As we age, we at times think that we would like to provide our potentially failing mental performance a little bit of a supercharge. One way of improving memory and other mental abilities appears to be brain training. This consists of a range of computer-based activities developed to help you become more skilled at different mental tasks for example memory, problem-solving and simple math. Strangely enough though, we tend to think that because we get better at playing the brain training games, that these abilities are easily transferable and thus beneficial in other mental tasks that we have to carry out.

The multi-million dollar brain training games industry would no doubt claim that its mental exercises are based on sound neurological theory and that therefore there is a reasonable possibility of improving your memory and other skills through using its mind exercise software. They have not however, at least to my knowledge, published the results of any studies that they have made into this area.

So BBC television in the UK decided to undertake a large-scale study. They teamed up with the Alzheimer's Society and the British Medical Research Council, and together they came up with a scientific study of the effects of playing brain training games on people's ability to remember things and other mental skills. The published results were quite surprising.

The research team took on thirteen thousand adult volunteers to be involved in their rigorous experiment for about one and a half months. The intention was to check out whether training the brain on a variety of activities designed to utilize different areas of the brain (such as the temporal lobes for memory and the parietal lobes for math), would develop mental abilities, such as memory and problem-solving skills.

In accordance with proper experimental design practice, there were two groups of participants in the experiment. Volunteers were randomly assigned either to the experimental or the control group.

The experimental group spent ten minutes a day for six weeks playing a set of brain training games designed to exercise a large spectrum of mental skills including memory. When retested at the end of the study, their ability to perform the brain games they had trained on had improved by a third, against their initial performance in them. The control group spent the same amount of time as the others surfing the internet.

This appears great; but were these superior mental abilities transferable from the mind exercises with which the group was already familiar, to general primary cognitive skills, such as problem-solving and recalling sequences of numbers? Both groups of subjects were examined on these abilities both before the study and immediately afterwards. The average score for both groups at the trial beginning was the same.

If you believe that brain training games can play a part in improving memory, then you might find the results a little surprising. There was actually a small improvement in the performance of both groups and what's more this improvement was virtually identical in the two groups. So even though there was some improvement, the lack of statistical significance between the two sets' results means that this could not be attributed to the training.

However, people who enjoy brain exercises should not lose heart. Firstly, speaking from personal experience, if nothing else, they are a lot of fun! Beyond that, even though you should not expect them to help with improving memory, there are certainly a number of other strategies for improving your memory and other mental abilities, which have been scientifically-proven. These include diet, reading, taking physical exercise and listening to music.