Brain Games Aim to Make Kids Smarter (SciAm Mind, requires sub­scrip­tion):
“Sci­en­tists have con­cocted men­tal fit­ness reg­i­mens to strengthen weak think­ing skills in students—in effect, mak­ing kids smarter…Psychologists have long believed that think­ing capac­i­ties such as atten­tion, mem­ory and rea­son­ing were fixed, but Read the rest of this entry »

I love read­ing the New Yorker. I have writ­ten before about bogus brain games, and about bogus brain train­ing claims. We have pub­lished a 10-question check­list to help con­sumers make informed decisions.

All this is to say I was sur­prised to read a recent New Yorker blog arti­cle titled “Brain games are bogus.” If you are going to make such strong claims, you need to back them up with seri­ous due dili­gence and analy­sis, and explain to read­ers what Read the rest of this entry »

Great­Call® and Posit Sci­ence® Part­ner to Offer Mobile Brain Exer­cises on the Jit­ter­bug Cell Phone (press release):

“The two games, named “Quick Match” and “Make a Pair,” aim to improve mem­ory and cog­ni­tive think­ing for Great­Call cus­tomers, and come pre­loaded on all Jit­ter­bug Plus cell phones at no extra cost or monthly ser­vice fee. Posit Science’s brain exer­cises are built on Read the rest of this entry »

The Dig­i­tal Brain Health mar­ket can be bro­ken down into two main tech­nol­ogy seg­ments: Read the rest of this entry »

Com­pa­nies turn to brain games to tackle work stress (Fortune):

“As more and more jobs rely on knowl­edge work, cre­ativ­ity, and com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills, it’s not enough to have work­ers sit­ting at their desks — they must also be men­tally sharp, emo­tion­ally present, and free from dis­trac­tion. The answer for some: brain training.

The fun, game atmos­phere of My Brain Solu­tions helped Nation­wide achieve another goal: mak­ing the employee assis­tance pro­gram Read the rest of this entry »

Draw the let­ter J on your men­tal sketch­pad. Now draw the let­ter D. Turn it 90 degrees to the left and put it in top of the J. What does this shape resemble?

An umbrella, of course! You’ve just used your work­ing mem­ory. Our work­ing mem­ory is a cru­cial part of the mem­ory sys­tem, not least because it helps us to fig­ure things out mentally.

Tem­po­rary work­space
Not only can we store infor­ma­tion in our short-term mem­ory, but we can also manip­u­late it. This is why short-term mem­ory is some­times also called work­ing mem­ory. Work­ing mem­ory is our tem­po­rary work­space. We use it in every­day tasks rang­ing from dri­ving (where you need to keep in mind the loca­tion of the cars around you as you nav­i­gate through traf­fic), to prepar­ing a bud­get (where you need to keep in mind one spend­ing cat­e­gory while work­ing on another), to writ­ing a let­ter (where you need to keep in mind all you want to say while devel­op­ing each point a sen­tence at a time). Read the rest of this entry »

The CEO of Mar­bles: The Brain Store will pro­vide an overview of What Brain Games Con­sumers Buy (in Mar­bles’ stores) and Why, at the upcom­ing 2012 Sharp­Brains Vir­tual Sum­mit (June 7-14th, 2012).

Lind­say started Mar­bles: The Brain Store in 2008 with the sim­ple idea of find­ing the best brain games out there and Read the rest of this entry »