Do you think that playing brain games online or on your mobile device will help boost your mental functioning? Are you curious about all of the hype? Can it really be so simple (and so boring) – just match these shapes (yawn..) and your brain will become super powered and disease will be warded off?
I don’t know about you; but, I was definitely curious about the publicity surrounding these games. As a graduate student (Master’s and PhD), I was convinced that I could discover the ultimate computerized brain exercises and I was going to revolutionize the brain gaming world! I was wrong. However, what I later discovered was far more powerful than I could have imagined at the time: The benefit of brain games is limited. They will only improve the exact skills that you are practicing but little else. If you want to keep your brain fit and generally healthy, online and mobile brain games are not the way to go. You have to engage in the complexity of life – learn new skills, get out of your comfort zone – e.g., write a play and have it performed. The list of engaging and challenging “brain exercises” is endless, but the important piece is to challenge yourself by doing something novel and make sure you are having fun while you do it.
In today’s blog, I am going to discuss why brain games don’t work, if your ultimate goal is overall mental health. I’ll first talk about my “not-so-revolutionary” graduate school research and then review some of the more recent work that scientifically supports the notion that to achieve mental fitness, we need to seek out everyday life activities that are both challenging and of interest to us.
1. Brain Games Debunked
The main problem with brain games is that they are limited in the mental abilities that they exercise. For example, in my Master’s research I trained people to “ignore irrelevant material” using a computerize task. My intentions, of course, were good – our ability to ignore distraction is important to our everyday life (e.g., blocking out surrounding conversations while trying to read the newspaper at a coffee shop or withholding the urge to check e-mails, when trying to write a paper), and, as we age, we experience more difficulty filtering out distraction. This is likely because “ignoring distraction” is controlled by the frontal lobe of the brain – an area of the brain that is particularly vulnerable to aging (click here for more about this published work). I trained the ability to ignore irrelevant information using something called the Stroop task. In this task, participants are asked to name the ink colour of what is shown on the screen, and ignore everything else.
So, if you see the word RED in red ink, you should respond “red”. But, if you see the word RED in blue ink, the correct answer is “blue”. This task is a lot more difficult to do than it sounds. This is because our brains are hardwired to read words; so, when the word RED appears in blue ink, our automatic inclination is to read the word and incorrectly say “red”.
To try the Stroop task for yourself click here (and scroll down to the bottom of the page to click the button and start the Stroop task).
What I found was that healthy older adults (age 60+) showed meaningful improvements in their ability to ignore distraction across six sessions. In other words, our research showed that – with practice – older adults got better at ignoring irrelevant information. (We even found that these benefits lasted for up to three years later! To check our more about this published work click here).
BUT, and this is a big BUT, we did not see any additional outside benefits. People got better at naming colours (Stroop task), but they didn’t get better at anything else that we tested (e.g., thinking speed or paying attention). It is my belief that the main goal of training mental abilities is to see benefits to a bunch of skills – not just the task that people are trained in.
Think about some of the other “brain games” that you (or someone you know), might do online – for example, practicing memory by matching the pattern of squares that turn grey on a 3×3 grid (like this):
In my opinion, it is not very helpful if training the ability to recreate patterns on a 3×3 grid only leads to you being better at recreating patterns on grids (or ignoring colour words only improves your ability to ignore colour words). There is no real-world application of this skill. No one does these tasks in their everyday life.
The current understanding about the benefits of brain games is that getting better at these types of games will improve your everyday abilities, such as memory and thinking speed. This is simply not the case.
If you’re not yet convinced, as a PhD student, neither was I. My belief was that I needed to find the right combination of brain games to unlock the “safe” of brain health and wellness. As a good doctoral student, I crafted a clever experiment to investigate whether I could crack the code.
I wont bore you with all of the details; but, in my PhD research, I again trained “ignoring distraction”; but, this time I used a variety of different tasks. I thought that by using a special mix of computerized brain exercise programs I would be sure to yield broader benefits than I saw previously. But, the end results were almost the same as what I found in my Master’s work – healthy older adults get better at all of the tasks I used during the training, but the benefits do not extend to other mental abilities – I specifically explored memory performance and thinking speed. The evidence was clear – brain games target very specific mental abilities and it is only those very discrete abilities that improve.
If you are interested in learning more, you can check out the academic publication of my PhD research by clicking here.
As I see it, the sole purpose of brain training (i.e., using a game/computerized program/mobile tool) is to improve a wide variety of mental functions that are used in everyday life. But, traditional brain games do not help in this pursuit – brain games only help us to get better at the specific games we are playing – little else.
But, all is not lost.
As a true believer in brain health and wellness, I dove deep into the research literature to explore what unique features of “brain training” approaches do lead to improvements beyond the training task.
Looking back – it seems so obvious; the biggest benefits of “brain training” come when you continuously submerge yourself in mentally complex and challenging environments and situations.
2. The Alternative to Brain Games
The Synapse Project (led by Dr. Denise C. Park) systematically showed the extra mental boost that arises when we remain in a state of sustained mental challenge and continuously seek to acquire new information (active engagement), as compared to inactive observations of familiar material and existing knowledge (passive engagement).
This may seem obvious – but how much do you actively engage in tasks? Do you like cooking or doing crosswords? You may be engaging in more “passive engagement” than you think.
In the Synapse Project, the active engagement group completed a professionally taught photography and/or quilting course. In the photography group, participants were trained how to use a camera and computer software programs for photo editing. In the quilting group, participants first learned basic quilting skills and then progressed to complete complex individual projects using a computerized sewing machine. Some participants completed a combination of these two courses.
Those in the passive engagement group engaged in activities (e.g., cooking, playing games, and going on regular field trips organized around a different topic, such as travel or history) that required no formal acquisition of novel information or they individually performed a structured set of activities that relied on existing knowledge, such as crossword puzzles or viewing documentaries.
Before and after training (about 14 weeks long in total), the authors looked at performance on a variety of different mental abilities, including thinking speed and memory. Incredibly, the authors found that those in the active engagement groups showed a meaningful improvement in memory (after completing their assigned photography and/or quilting course) in comparison to the passive engagement group. When the authors looked at each group separately, they found evidence that those that learned photography alone or in combination with quilting showed the greatest improvements in memory relative to those who performed individualized activities that relied on existing knowledge, such as crossword puzzles or viewing documentaries.
THESE FINDINGS ARE AMAZING!! – TRAIN PHOTOGRAPHY OR PHOTOGRAPHY + QUILTING AND SEE BOOSTS IN MEMORY PERFORMANCE.
In other words, these authors found that sustained effort to acquire a demanding new skill improved memory.
The take-home message is clear: SEEK OUT ACTIVITIES THAT ARE BOTH NOVEL AND MENTALLY CHALLENGING!
Want to learn more about Dr. Denise Park’s Synapse Project? Click here.
So, what did we learn in today’s blog post?
Just like we exercise our bodies physically, we need to exercise our brains with mental challenges. Training specific mental abilities (e.g., thinking speed, memory, ignoring distraction) is not as promising as training global, complex, and novel skills.
We need to push ourselves to explore new and exciting avenues that challenge and expand our minds. We need to shift away from exercising specific mental abilities (e.g., by using online or mobile brain games) and move towards training overall general skills.
If we engage in the complexity that is life, the discrete abilities (e.g., thinking speed, memory) will benefit too.
Think about what makes YOUR brain sweat? That’s where you want to be.
It is very important that I highlight that this is different for everyone. You have to think about what you are interested in and what challenges you.
You know what would be challenging to me – crossword puzzles!
What?? This may be confusing to hear, because you just read about how in the Synapse Project they categorized crossword puzzles as “passive” engagement. BUT, remember the definition of “active” engagement: sustained mental challenge and the continuous acquisition of new information. I never do crossword puzzles, and I am not good at them. So, if I took up crosswords this Sunday, it would be novel for me and a true mental challenge. I would be actively engaging in the crossword, which is where I want to be.
The take-home from the Synapse Project is that we need to continuously force ourselves out of our comfort zone and into an active learning state.
Don’t get stuck on a specific list of engaging activities – the list will be different for everyone.
I have listed some examples here to get your wheels turning, but the possibilities are endless.
Take or teach a course
Learn a new skill (e.g., sequence dancing)
Give a presentation
Write a play (perform a play)
The key is to keep pushing yourself – once you master a new skill, how can you make it a bit more mentally demanding? Push yourself outside of your comfort zone, and continue to challenge yourself!
Need help deciding how to challenge your brain with fun, creative and novel activities that you will enjoy? Fill out this quick survey (click here) to answer a few questions about who you are and what you like to do, and let’s get in touch! I would love to help you come up with some creative solutions to get your brain in shape.