Improving Memory: Are Mind Training Exercises The Solution?

There is no denying that brain training games are terrific fun and if you play them regularly you may undoubtedly improve considerably at playing them. You may well believe that in playing them, you are taking steps for improving memory and for sharpening up all your other brain functions. It is justifiable to assume this, yet how do we know that there has truly been an improvement? Do we have scientific evidence of the effectiveness of these mental exercises?

You might be forgiven for thinking that all the brain training games have been designed taking the ever-increasing body of brain science into account. Indeed, a lot is already known about the neurological underpinnings of how memory is laid down in the first place, and then improved. Maybe they have been designed this way, but where is the evidence of how successful you can be using these exercises?

Well, recently the very revealing results of a large UK study into the effectiveness of brain exercises on improving memory etc. have been published, and they are probably not what you would have predicted. BBC television conducted this research in conjunction with the British Medical Research Council and the Alzheimer’s Society.

The researchers enrolled 13000 adult volunteers to be involved in their rigorous experiment over a period of about one and a half months. The intention was to see whether training the brain on a variety of activities engineered to use different regions of the brain (such as the temporal lobes for memory and the parietal lobes for math), would boost mental faculties, such as memory and problem-solving skills.

The volunteers were divided into an experimental group and a control group. The first group did a broad range of brain exercises, including ones for improving memory , for ten minutes every other day for six weeks. Since the tasks were internet-based, the control group just used the internet for the same amount of time. At the end of the trial period, the brain training group was retested on the brain exercises and was found to be 33 per cent better at performing the brain games they had trained on.

The objective of the research was to discover if becoming skilled at brain training activities would result in improvement in the same abilities when used in a different context. So both groups of test subjects were tested before and following the study in their ability to carry out activities such as problem-solving and remembering number sequences.

If you believe that brain training games can play a part in improving memory, then you might find the results a little surprising. There was actually a small improvement in the performance of both groups and what’s more this improvement was virtually identical in the two groups. So even though there was some improvement, the lack of statistical significance between the two sets’ results means that this could not be attributed to the training.

So if you have been playing these brain training games with the intention of improving your memory, is it time to give them up and put them out to pasture? Well, that is entirely up to you, but do bear in mind that studies, no matter what their size, can be flawed and that what does not work for some people could work for you. If you really care about improving memory , then there are many other memory strategies you can explore, such as playing sports, taking a look at improving your diet and even going to the odd concert.