When you are researching for strategies to improve your memory, a clear and extremely entertaining solution is to play brain training games. These are designed not only to assist with improving memory , but also to boost your other mental abilities, such as problem-solving. Each time you play, you definitely get quicker and more accurate and get much better results in the games. The question that is not usually posed is whether or not these game-playing abilities are consequently applicable to other fields in your life.
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 researchers wanted to discover whether playing a number of computer-based activities, including memory exercises, over a six week time period, each designed to exercise different areas of the brain, would result in participants in the study to be better able to use their brain abilities in other areas not related to playing brain training games. The trial involved a good cross-section of thirteen thousand of the adult British public.
The volunteers were divided into an experimental group and a control group. The first group did a broad range of brain exercises, including ones for improving memory , for ten minutes every other day for six weeks. Since the tasks were internet-based, the control group just used the internet for the same amount of time. At the end of the trial period, the brain training group was retested on the brain exercises and was found to be 33 per cent better at performing the brain games they had trained on.
This appears excellent; but were these enhanced brain abilities transferable from the mind exercises with which the group was already familiar, to general primary cognitive abilities, like problem-solving and recalling sequences of numbers? Both groups of subjects were tested on these abilities both just before the study and as soon as it had ended. The mean score for the two groups at the start of the experiment was the same.
Upon retesting at the end of the trial, the control group’s score had improved by 4.35 per cent. Surprisingly however, the score for the experimental group was almost identical. It represented only a 6.52 per cent increase over its original score. So, statistically there was no difference between the two groups. Of course, what they could not conclude was whether the small improvement was just the effect of working online. Perhaps there could have been another group that did nothing online.
So if you have been playing these brain training games with the intention of improving your memory, is it time to give them up and put them out to pasture? Well, that is entirely up to you, but do bear in mind that studies, no matter what their size, can be flawed and that what does not work for some people could work for you. If you really care about improving memory , then there are many other memory strategies you can explore, such as playing sports, taking a look at improving your diet and even going to the odd concert.
