Decrying Nintendo's claims as "charlatanism," Alain Lieury, a professor of cognitive psychology in the UK, believes that there is no merit to the company's suggestion that titles like Brain Age provide any tangible benefits to a player's memory or mental ability.
Brain Age, a hit Nintendo DS game, was developed with the help of Dr. Ryuta Kawashima, a Japanese neuroscientist who believes that brain exercises in the form of puzzle solving every day can be instrumental in maintaining one's mental acuity.
Dr. Lieury disagrees, and conducted a survey with 67 ten-year-old children who showed little to no significant improvements on a battery of tests when they spent seven weeks using the Brain Age software, as compared to children who did puzzles with pencils and paper and with those who went to school as normal.
Though titles like Brain Age are typically marketed towards adults hoping to stave off mental degradation, Lieury explains that "if it doesn't work on children, it won't work on adults," calling
Kawashima "one of a long list of dream merchants."
I'm no scientist, but it seems that the marketing promotions around Brain Age
are centered around improving your performance at the game's challenges, with a few notes about tangible benefits you might incur if you keep at it. While I agree that children shouldn't be home-schooled by a $20 DS game, is it naive to suggest that adults shuffling from the office to the couch would find their time better spent with Sudoku than American Idol?
Image courtesy Nintendo
Nintendo brain-trainer 'no better than pencil and paper' [Times Online, via GamePolitics]
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