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Use it or lose it

Aging on the brain? These stimulating mind games may keep gray matter sharp

By Jay Dedrick, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published March 10, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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Remember when it was enough to merely tease your brain with puzzles? No more. In the 21st century, it's all about brain training.

Photo by Marie Griffin © The Rocky

Remember when it was enough to merely tease your brain with puzzles? No more. In the 21st century, it's all about brain training.

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Remember when it was enough to merely tease your brain with puzzles? No more. In the 21st century, it's all about brain training. Giving the ol' noggin a fierce workout. Pumping up the gray matter.

A growing variety of electronic products are targeting consumer anxiety over the aging mind. And we're buying what they're selling: The Brain Age game program alone has sold 17 million copies worldwide since its launch nearly three years ago in Japan.

Does it help? No better time to ask the question than this week, which happens to be Brain Awareness Week, aimed at boosting public awareness of brain research.

The simple answer: While the science attached to many such games points to immediate stimulation of the brain, there's little if any evidence indicating long-term results.

"It's hard for anybody to say that a specific amount of exposure to any of the things on the market is going to benefit them many years down the line," says Marilyn S. Albert, a professor of neurology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who helped pioneer studies on the maintenance of cognitive function. The studies date back to the mid- 1990s.

"But there's no downside to being mentally active. Nobody thinks (brain games) are going to do anyone harm."

And that includes the old-fashioned, pencil-on-paper kind of brain teasers.

"I do crosswords a little bit, but my daughter does them more than I do. So does my mother - and she's about 95," Albert says.

Hoping you'll be as sharp when you reach that age? Here's a look at the various types of products aiming to catch your mind's eye; any of them are bound to at least keep you busy in the meantime.

Handheld video games

* Get smart: Since the monster success of Brain Age, Nintendo's pocket-size, touch- screen DS system has gained a small stable of games aimed at brain-building. Big Brain Academy (also available in a version for the home Wii console), Brain Age 2, Flash Focus, Your Word Coach and other titles promise activity to keep your mind agile.

* Upside: Great portability - perfect for tucking into your carry-on bag when flying - and sharp, engaging graphics. Hard to beat these for the fun factor. Based on your performance, the Brain Age games calculate - yup - the age of your brain; it probably won't surprise you that this varies from day to day.

* Downside: The trouble with the daily "training" these games encourage: Familiarity breeds boredom.

* Cost: about $120 for the DS Lite system, $20 to $30 for most game titles

Web-based applications

* Get smart: If you have a PC with Internet access, you have all the equipment you'll need to access mental exercises at such sites as happy-neuron.com and lumosity.com. Rather than buying a game system or software, you're paying a monthly or yearly subscription to access the multimedia puzzles and exercises.

* Upside: Though not as playfully designed as the Nintendo DS titles, they're still fun. Typically, the sites offer a wider variety of games than individual video-game titles. You'll probably find your PC monitor screen easier to read than that of a tiny handheld device. Subscriptions can be given as gifts. Try them out online before paying anything.

* Downside: When you're without Web access, you're without your training gear. And if your Internet connection is slow, you may get frustrated when switching between games.

* Cost: Happy Neuron, $9.95 monthly, $99.95 yearly; Lumosity, $24.95 for a three-month membership, $79.95 for a one-year membership

Computer software

Get smart: A one-time purchase gets you some serious brain training, with games tailored for various cognitive functions. MindFit is specifically aimed at ages 45 and up; Brain Fitness Program 2.0 was the overall winner of a recent Wall Street Journal product test.

* Advantages: No need for an Internet connection; wide variety of stimulating exercises. Test games online before buying.

* Disadvantages: Playing these feels a bit more like taking your medicine than enjoying a puzzle. They're not cheap.

* Cost: MindFit, $139 for download, $149 for CD-ROM, e-mindfitness.com; Brain Fitness Program 2.0, $395, positscience.com

Puzzles in print

Get smart: You're already holding on to it: Crossword and Sudoku puzzles are at the back of this section. If you're looking for a different style of brain-busters that you can curl up with at night, try The Big Book of Brain Games: 1,000 PlayThinks of Art, Mathematics & Science, by Ivan Moscovich.

Advantages: Old-fashioned portability and no need for batteries or an Internet connection

Disadvantages: No motion or sound, unlike the computer-based products (though some people might find that an advantage)

Cost: 50 cents for a copy of the Rocky; $22.95 for The Big Book of Brain Games (Workman)

Test your skills!

Ready for a quick workout? Here are two mind puzzles from The Big Book of Brain Games. The first is easy, rating 1 on a difficulty scale of 10; the second is trickier, with a 6 rating. Answers are below the Dear Abby column at right.

* Ahmes's Puzzle: Seven houses each have seven cats. Each cat kills seven mice. Each of the mice, if alive, would have eaten seven ears of wheat. Each ear of wheat produces seven measures of flour.

How many measures of flour were saved by the cats?

* Lottery Draw: If you draw the lucky ticket, you win the lottery jackpot. You are given the option to draw one ticket out of a box of 10, or draw 10 times out of a box of 100. Which choice gives you the best odds?

BRAIN GAME ANSWERS

Ahmes's Puzzle: 16,807 measures of flour. That's 7 X 7 X 7 X 7 X 7. This puzzle, which comes from the ancient Egyptian "Rhind Papyrus," was written by the scribe Ahmes in 1850 B.C. Perhaps the world's oldest puzzle, it has inspired a great many variations over the thousands of years since its creation.

Lottery Draw: The choices offer identical odds. But in a psychological experiment, about four in 10 people preferred the single draw and held to this view even when the other choice was altered to provide 50 draws from the box of 100.

Comments

  • March 10, 2008

    6:48 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    JohnSWren writes:

    Art Linkletter in his new book How to Make the Rest of Your Life the Best of Your Life says to keep your brain sharp you should never retire, change career paths, but never, never retire.

    We give free help each Friday to those who are want to make the rest of their life the best it can be at the Denver IDEA Cafe, more information and RSVP at http://ideacafe.meetup.com/1

  • March 10, 2008

    8:20 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    Cabermon writes:

    "Lottery Draw" is written ambiguously: It can be solved 2 ways.
    For the "10 draws from the box of 100" case, if each ticket is returned to the box after being drawn and read, your answer is correct and the odds are .01000. But if each ticket is drawn, read, and discarded, the odds for each subsequent draw inprove: 1/100; 1/99;...to 1/91. This results in overall odds of .010459.
    Happy figuring!