Brainophiles

An active brain is a good brain, so solve those crosswords and wrestle with puzzles, play video games, buy brain-training software and practice, practice, practice.

What does all the activity accomplish? A study shows that girls who played Tetris increased their brain matter and started thinking more efficiently. Maybe soon, someone at the Oscars will thank his brain-training coach, and sales of that gear will soar. But there is no way that solving Word Jumbles will help you win the Pulitzer Prize, right?

The British Broadcasting Corporation wants to know, and you are invited to participate in a year-long experiment to answer the question: Does Brain Training Work?

“Brain Test Britain” uses games and quizzes that are skewed toward British-coloured trivia. But I watch BBCA, and I look forward to the day that William is king and surely, there must be some British blood in my ancestry, which makes me close to qualified, so I signed up.

Participants agree to train their brains for 10 minutes a day, three times a week for six weeks. And, if they choose, practice to their hearts’ delight. New enlistees play three games to establish a benchmark, then complete those tests after six weeks, three months, six months and a year. Testees can drop out at any time.

How delightful! It’s fun, painless, even something to aid all mankind. Who am I to refuse a few minutes from a busy work day, to help mankind? Or, at least, that part of mankind that embraces brain training.

The experiment was created with the Medical Research Council’s Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit and the Alzheimer’s Society, and Clive Ballard, the director for research at the Alzheimer’s Society, explains one of the purposes.

 “‘Use it or lose it’—is that the rule for keeping our brains fit and healthy? Brain training is based on the idea that practising mental exercises and keeping the brain active will help to improve, or at least maintain, our mental skills,” he says.

 “If brain training can help preserve our memory and thinking, as we get older, this could be a tremendous benefit to individuals and society. It could have a major impact on both the risk of developing, and the age at which you might develop serious brain diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease. But if brain training doesn’t work, people should not be encouraged to spend their money on false hope, and we should focus on other things that people could do to protect their brains more effectively.”

Lab UK is a BBC Web page that brings together all of the corporation’s scientific experiments. It guarantees the experiments are based on “sound scientific methodology” and are ethical, and that “Data collected for Lab UK experiments will be available for academic research and educational purposes only.”

Brain Test Britain “has made sure it meets all the accepted standards for a scientifically valid study,” says Dr. Adrian Owen of the Medical Research Council, Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, England.

Owen and a colleague recently launched Cambridge Brain Sciences, a free Web site (with a grant from MRC Technology’s Development Gap Fund) where people can test memory, reasoning, concentration and planning. On its Web site, Medical Research Council Technology describes its Development Gap Fund as “intended to strengthen new patent filings or to support the application of patents from good, commercially interesting, ideas.”

Oh, and that study about girls and Tetris? The research was done by the nonprofit Mind Research Network in Albuquerque, N.M., with funding from Blue Planet Software Inc., the sole agent for the Tetris Co. The study’s lead author, Dr. Richard Haier, is a consultant to Blue Planet.

Take that for what you will. Me? I’m choosing the higher purpose and donating my brain to help all mankind. And you can take that however you will.