Can You Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day?
Sunday, March 1, 2009 23:45
After a fantastic run in the 1980s and 1990s, Nintendo suffered through tough times for the better part of a decade. It lost the system wars two generations in a row to the Sony PlayStation juggernaut, and had unfortunately cultivated a reputation where hardcore gamers and third-party developers were taught to stay away from the company and its unending steam of kiddie games.
With the successive releases of the DS and Wii, Nintendo fought back. Gone were (most of) the silly, childish themes and reliance on the same tired sequels from the same tired franchises. Instead, the company re-branded itself as appealing to everyone — gamers and the casual family alike. Instead of just rehasing first-person 3D shooters, Nintendo’s platforms became filled with “lifestyle” utilities and services — pop in a cartridge or DVD and gain access to cooking recipes, guided meditation, fitness routines, and even “brain training.”
It was a last-gasp move by a company on the brink of going under, and it worked like a charm. Riding the Internet wave of alternative media, marketing, and medicine, Nintendo was once again the shining star of the video game industry, outselling rival systems by Microsoft and Sony at a 2-1 pace.
But what of those lifestyle and personal-development themes? Can a video game featuring the disembodied head of a Japanese physician really enhance your mental and intellectual capacity?
Turns out the answer — according to not one but two separate investigations — is pretty much a resounding “no.” While it seems at least passably logical that, as a muscle, the brain would be susceptible to increased strength through repeated exercise, there has been little to no actual double-blind, peer-reviewed research to confirm any of the contentions made within the game.
Full disclosure: I own both Brain Training and its copycat Big Brain Academy. The games are just fun time-wasters, and I don’t really think I ever entered into playing them believing that I was actually influencing my own neurological development. But you have to wonder, in this age of homeopathy and telemarketing quick-fixes, just how many people might have.
