Do you think brain training works?

Does it have "an impact"?

Sure, anything you think about will have "an impact" in some form. It might even have more than one!



Will playing a game of Sudoku during your lunch break improve your ability to play Sudoku and similar logic games? Probably.

Will playing a game of Sudoku during your lunch break turn you into an engineering genius that can build death rays, and allow you to combine spare parts into amazing power sources that power body armor you can build while prisoner in a desert bunker and take over the world? Probably not.

Will playing a game of Sudoku during your lunch break turn you into an engineering genius that can build death rays, and allow you to combine spare parts into amazing power sources that power body armor you can build while prisoner in a desert bunker and take over the world? Probably not.

Damnit.

*uninstalls Sodoku*

I think exercising the brain through logic and memory games improves critical thinking and memorization skills. I also think there's been a link to reduction in Alzheimer's. Won't make you a genius, but may reduce the effects of old age and keep your mind sharp.

Games reduce Alzheimer's

Yeah, agree to the the guys above. All games that make you focus and train particular brain functions (memory, algebra, logics, visuals) contribute to the brains performance. But like with any training, you shouldn't overdo it - you can get wasted after several dozen sudoku in a row with no breather

Anything (yes, anything) that uses your brain makes you better at that particular skill and better at general things (e.g. problem solving). Whether these kind of things work? Where you do explicit "training" of your brain? Nah. Not really. It makes some difference, yeah, but it won't radically change anything about your brain or somesuch nonsense

*silently whistles as my Sudoku Death Ray is placed on the moon*

I can't remember the source, but I read that physical exercise is a lot better for your brain than brain training exercises.

There's some speculation that "overuse" of the so-called Default Mode Network (DMN) in the brain may lead to excessive amyloid deposition (an indicator of Alzheimer's). Being engaged in a task disables the DMN, so one could argue that "brain training" may help reduce one's risk of Alzheimer's.

From this link:

[color="#403838"][font="Arial, Verdana, Helvetica,"][...] the causality between amyloid deposition and DMN dysfunction remains to be determined. On the one hand, the observed DMN dysfunction might be one of the functional consequences of amyloid deposition. On the other hand, DMN dysfunction might be one of principal causes of amyloid deposition, given that high levels of neural activity can result in amyloid accumulation in vivo (Cirrito et al., 2005) and that nondemented elders with amyloid burden fail to deactivate DMN during memory tasks (Sperling et al., 2009). Perhaps most likely, amyloid deposition and DMN dysfunction might aggravate each other in the course of AD. The recently developed high-field fMRI, together with other invasive techniques, will offer a chance to clarify this question in animals.[/font]
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I can personally attest that speed reading does work. I increase my reading speed to 16 times normal human does. However, I cannot go as fast as the pro does. Interestingly, it about doing it right. We grow & trained reading an alphabet at a time, so our brain (and eye) stuck that way. But all those articles and research show that we can read by word (you know, the text that have jumbled letters, except at the start and end). Our brain can do this automatically, and fast. Then train yourself to read sentences instead of word by word.

Those that have high reading speed can read the whole paragraph at a time, but I cannot do this yet, but for me 16 times faster is enough.

The problem I have with this type of websites claiming this type of training is their marketing strategy. The harder someone claims "it works", the less inclined I am to believe that. It's just like teleshopping! It's the same marketing strategy as for those methods that would magically make you lose weight.

If a website would list facts, statistics and numbers related to their training, in a black font on white background, I would take them seriously.

If a website instead lists testimonials by people who are so amazingly better after than before, with pretty pictures, fonts, colors, photos of smiling people, etc..., I don't believe them.

And since every single website related to brain improvement has been more similar to the latter than the former, I don't really believe in it currently.