A rash of new brain games to help reverse the effect of aging recently attracted the attention of British scientists involved with a TV show called “Bang Goes The Theory.” (Sounds like a fun idea that will find its way to the US one day, no doubt!)
The scientists had thousands of people do online brain games for 10 minutes a day three times a week, then after six weeks concluded the activity made no difference to their IQ. Shocking!
This was a pointless exercise from the start — even if the “brain games” were legitimate, cognitive change cannot occur in that short a period or with that little intensity. Nevertheless, Posit Science, the developers of the Brain Fitness Program (protocol: one hour, 4x a week for 10 weeks) felt compelled to defend their program.
This study was designed to fail of course, because it was done for a show that aims to “expose” scientific theories.
The shame in this is that brain plasticity is possibly the most important scientific discovery of the last 50 years and is now established science. Furthermore, it has been applied in learning software like Fast ForWord and used as a treatment for dyslexia, auditory processing disorder and more. And yet it has yet to penetrate the public mainstream and so remains vulnerable to being lumped with lesser brain games in stunts like this.
Here is the article link:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36670031/ns/health-mental_health/
