Have you ever seen an app or a game that claims it will help strengthen your brain? The idea makes sense at a basic level – if physical training can improve your physical health and abilities, why couldn’t mental training improve your mental health and abilities? A recent review of scientific papers combined evidence to discover if these training programs actually have any effect on brain ability (commonly referred to in scientific papers as cognition) … results were mixed. Reaction time, attention, and short-term memory may be improved by game-based training. Specifically, multiplayer computer games with no time pressure were the most effective in improving reaction time. Executive function – the brain’s abilities to update the information in the mind at any given moment, to switch between multiple thought processes at once, and to stop knee-jerk reactions in favor of more thought-out solutions – did not display a similar improvement with mental training.
Given these lackluster findings for brain games, researchers at UNCG are focused on the potential benefits of physical activity for strengthening the brain. Click here to learn more!