Brain Training Benefits

In winning the gold medal in the 200m butterfly in Beijing, Michael Phelps swam 7% faster than Mark Spitz did when he won the same event back in 1972. Phelps would have beaten Spitz by 14 meters. More remarkably, even the slowest swimmer in the 2008 Olympic butterfly final would have beaten Spitz by 5 seconds. This doesn’t diminish Spitz’s achievements. It just shows us how much more we know today about training for peak physical performance than we did in 1972.

The concept and application of physical training that brought about such huge improvements in the sports world provides a useful analogy for the kind of revolution that’s happening today in the world of brain science and mental health. Overturning many decades of misplaced pessimism about the possibility of improving brain function, a mountain of new research shows that the brain can change and grow throughout our lives. Everything from math scores to Alzheimer symptoms have been found to benefit from brain fitness training. Scientists have even proven that fluid intelligence, long since thought fixed and immutable, can be increased with the right kind of brain exercise.

These studies, for instance, came out in just the past few months:

Test Scores Improve with Brain Games

In a study of 600 Scottish children in 32 schools math scores increased by more than 50% for children who played a brain game for twenty minutes a day for just ten weeks.

Brain Fitness Program Helps Prevent Memory Decline

In endorsing brain training as a way to help prevent the onset of Alzheimer symptoms, the Alzheimer’s Association of Australia cited randomized, controlled trials showing cognitive gains in mental sharpness, memory and concentration.

Demanding Memory Training Increases Intelligence

University researchers from Michigan and Bern, Switzerland recorded increases in fluid intelligence of more than 40% with just 19 days of intensive working memory training.

I Use My Brain All The Time, Why Do I Need Brain Training?

Sadly, once we’re out of school and established in a career, most of us don’t stretch our brains the way we used to. And this means we’re facing a long slow decline in mental function. That’s the bad news. The good news is that scientists have proven that with the right kind of exercise we can stimulate new cell growth and positive change in the brain at any stage in life, stemming or even reversing this decline. If we want to keep the brain growing, it’s not enough to turn our mind to familiar tasks. New cell growth and new brain maps require focused attention and fairly intensive mental exercises. But the benefits are well worth it.

Academic Success & Learning

The child’s brain is necessarily plastic, as children absorb and process the wealth of information they need in order to function in the world. Further stimulation with the right kind of brain training enhances a child’s ability to focus and learn, a perfect supplement to traditional classroom education. For teenagers and adults in higher education, brain training looks set to become another tool that can be used to achieve their best scores on the omnipresent standardized tests. Of course, brain training has an added advantage in that it transfers these improvements into the next course of study.

When helping children with learning dysfunctions educators increasingly turn to brain exercise as a preferred alternative to accommodations. While an accommodation works around the disability, brain exercise tackles it head-on. By testing and strengthening the area of weakness under conditions that stimulate plasticity, the child can reduce or even eliminate the weakness altogether. (One of the pioneers in this approach, Barbara Arrowsmith Young, founder of the Arrowsmith School, has successfully helped hundreds of children do just that.)

Career Success & Self-Improvement

Many of those engaged in careers that demand creative problem-solving and focused mental activity can use brain training as a way to stay sharp and in peak mental form. Unfortunately, the demands of the workplace tend to produce poor conditions for brain improvement – competing demands for focus and attention, staples of the modern workplace – disrupt the brain’s ability to form memories and stimulate new cell growth. A brain training program that demands complete focus and trains core areas of cognitive function (working-memory, processing speed, and left-brain right-brain interaction) can make us significantly more effective and successful in the workplace.

An interesting outcome of the recent upsurge in brain training technologies has been the finding that brain exercise can lead to improvements in areas that at first seem unrelated – such as musical ability and self-esteem. But when we reflect on the brain’s central role in any and all aspects of thinking (including feeling) this begins to make perfect sense. If we’re already engaged in maximizing our potential through activities such as physical exercise, yoga, reading, therapy, mindfulness meditation, etc. adding a program of mental exercise makes perfect sense.

Life-Long Mental Health & Well-being

The UCSF Memory and Aging Center reports that for each decade past the age of forty-five we lose about 10% of our cognitive capacity. Joe Verghese, M.D. (New England Journal of Medicine, volume=348, issue=25, 2003) found that people can reduce their risk of developing Alzheimer’s symptoms by 64% by adding a brain exercise to their weekly schedule. He also showed that people who engage in brain exercise four times a week have a 47% lower risk of dementia than those who do so just once a week. Senior centers around the country have begun to introduce brain training programs. But clearly if we want to avoid mental decline we should begin to engage in regular mental exercise much sooner, while we’re in our thirties or early forties.

And as if these weren’t sufficient reasons to run out and invest in a good brain training tool, scientists have also linked new cell growth with the efficacy of antidepressants and reduction in the stress that can lead to depression. Brain training then also promises the ideal conditions to help counter and mitigate depression.

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