“Bird Safari: Featured in the visual-training program InSight, this game asks players to recall a specific bird — flashed on the screen for only an instant – out of a flock. InSight costs $395 U.S. online through Posit Science.”
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Before I begin listing the latest computer games and expert tips on how best to improve your brain fitness, like push-ups for normal aging and forgetful minds, here are some thoughts from my grandma, a foxy eighty-something:
“Don’t tell me to do those puzzles. They just rock me into insensibility,” she said. “My brain moves too fast to begin with. In less than five minutes, I’m trying to remember when your grandpa’s next doctor’s appointment is, and whether we need coffee cream, God forbid.
“Meanwhile your grandpa starts hollering, ‘Where’s my walking stick? Where’s my hearing aid?’ And while I’m standing on my head looking for his stuff, the oatmeal pot boils over. Anyhow, you’re nuttier than a fruitcake if you think getting old is like a bowl of cherries,” she said
Fortunately for my grandmother, wisdom isn’t lost with age as easily as walking sticks.
“Some things don’t decline,” says Fergus Craik, a leading cognitive psychologist based in Toronto and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Memory.”For example, people in their 50s and 60s tend to have better vocabulary and word knowledge (than younger people). And knowledge of the world seems to hold up with age, as do skilled procedures like mental arithmetic or playing piano, if you still practice.”
But, as many are well aware, other parts of memory and thinking become increasingly difficult. Planning a car trip with several stops, for instance, becomes harder to imagine. Trying to remember recent events, such as where you parked your car, can feel like you’re suddenly shrouded in fog. Problems can start to surface as early as one’s 40s, but typically it’s not until the mid- to late 60s that these minor blocks begin to pile up.
As such, a variety of digital brain fitness products designed to sharpen memory have been launched, from Posit Science’s computer games, to online games at Lumosity.com, to Nintendo’s Brain Age video games. According to the U.S.-based market research and advisory firm SharpBrains, the brain fitness industry is projected to jump from $265 million in 2008 to between $1 billion and $5 billion by 2015 — a range that depends on whether researchers can introduce brain fitness products that work, and whether consumers are interested in spending the time on these games.
“The trouble is, it’s no great feat to practice one thing and get better,” Craik points out during a phone interview. He is a researcher at the Rotman Research Institute in Toronto, an internationally recognized centre for the study of human brain function, affiliated with the Baycrest geriatric and academic health science centre.
“We want to show that these games improve general cognitive functioning, like paying attention, concentration and the ability to use strategies.”
Figuring out exactly how a computer game can help the brain develop these cognitive functions is the “extremely interesting problem” Craik and his colleagues at Baycrest-Rotman Institute have been busy trying to solve. In December, Baycrest and MaRS Venture Group, a science and learning consulting group, launched Cogniciti, a company that aims to develop brain fitness products based on scientific principles introduced by the Rotman team.
With researchers like Craik on the team, along with Donald Stuss, an expert on the frontal lobes, Cogniciti products will aim to teach targeted skills, like planning and staying focused, with which aging adults seem to have the most trouble. The first product is scheduled to be launched in about a year.
Posit Science
Rotman researchers are not the first looking to get into the booming brain fitness industry.
Michael Merzenich, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco, is chief scientific officer at Posit Science Corp., a company founded in 2003 that sells brain games exclusively online, including InSight and Brain Fitness Program ($395 U.S. each). The company’s latest launch, Drive Sharp ($89), is designed to help customers react faster behind the wheel.
“The leap is to train the right areas of the brain so that you see a difference on everyday tasks,” says Steven Aldrich, Posit Science CEO, echoing Craik’s ambitions. Only at Posit Science, the company has already decided what those “right” areas are.
The visual-training program InSight includes games like Bird Safari; a bird is briefly flashed on screen, and players are then instructed to identify it as part of a similar-looking flock. In another time-test game, Jewel Diver, players are asked to identify colourful jewels that are flashed on the screen and then hidden behind greyish-white moving bubbles. There are more bubbles than jewels, which is where the challenge comes in. Players get bonus points if they can colour-code their choices.
“On a very basic level, these exercises are training up core elements (such as vision and attention) that help brain processing,” says Aldrich. “Because we literally see things with our eyes but don’t process it fast enough. The brain needs to decide what’s important and make a decision.”
Older adults tend to have sluggish reaction times. According to Aldrich, when these visual skills are practised in both timed and distracting environments, it will be easier for participants to later search for visual information in their memories.
Similarly, Posit Science’s Brain Fitness Program works with auditory stimuli, so that gamers can feel more confident about attending to sounds. “Whether it’s coming from the eyes or the ears, we want to train these areas so that the accuracy and clarity of information makes it easier to remember,” Aldrich says.
“It’s like a TV — crisp, clear, and digital images are easier to encode — and are therefore easier to remember, he adds.
But could digital bird chasing possibly be better than, say, watching an intellectually stimulating history documentary and then answering quizzes on the subject matter afterward?
In a 2009 study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 242 adults with an average age of 75 tested out Posit Science’s auditory Brain Fitness Program for 40 sessions. A control group of 245 similar-aged adults watched educational videos on art, history and literature, and were then given quizzes. Those who tried the Brain Fitness Program better improved their memory, attention and processing speed overall. To show these results, they had to click away on their computers for an hour a day, five days a week for eight weeks, which was comparable to the time spent on the video task.
Skeptics join in
While Craik has not gone over Posit Science’s data, he is less skeptical on the subject of brain games in general than he used to be. His perspective until recently, he says, was that the market has almost totally been consumer driven, “(capitalizing) on anxieties about forgetfulness and so on.”
What helped change Craik’s mind were various studies, such as those on bilingualism conducted by York University researcher Ellen Bialystok, who helped prove that being fluent in several languages helped stave off dementia by an average of four years. (Her results were published in Neuropsychologia in 2007.)
Another report, published by Arthur Kramer of the University of Illinois in the Journal of Applied Physiology, stated that aerobics, of all things, seems to have a significant impact on one’s ability to plan, schedule and stay mentally focused on a task.
Craik believes these somewhat unrelated cases document that there is such a thing as “cognitive reserve” — a mechanism that delays the effects of age-related physical brain decay. “While the brain is damaged, the skill helps you use your brain in a more (efficient) way,” Craik explains, paving the way for computer games that can help trigger and train these skills.
But are games really necessary?
As for those Posit Science games, timed jewel-diving tests probably aren’t the only skeleton keys to those ever-profitable cognitive reserves. And neither are any other brain games, necessarily.
“If (the game) stresses you out, that’s not going to help,” says Dolly Dastoor, a neuropsychologist in the department of psychiatry at McGill University. Dastoor is also clinical administrator of the dementia program at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute.
Dastoor recommends computer games and websites to her patients, but like many experts on the aging brain, she points out that lifestyle factors such as stress, depression and isolation can also strongly affect memory loss.
“The isolated tend to age faster,” she says. Basic social interaction is a complex activity that promotes brain fitness.
Other healthy lifestyle factors Dastoor recommends are a pro-memory diet that’ s low in fat and high in folic acid and vitamins C, E and B12, with lots of green vegetables and antioxidant-rich fruit like blueberries. Omega-3s (found in fish oil, eggs, milk and cheese) have also been found to have positive effects on the brain, eyes and nerves.
That ever-increasing to-do list of healthy recommendations sure makes it tempting to doze off to Dancing with the Stars… until the show ends and you look for your brain-fitness to-do list, and realize it’s lost.
So try to pep up and remember the number 11.
“There is research that shows that someone who is involved in 11 different activities a week — say, singing in a choir twice a week, learning Italian once a week and playing Sudoku several times — has better performance on memory tests,” says Angela Troyer, a clinical neuropsychologist who runs the Memory and Aging Program at Baycrest. Her program helps people with normal age-related brain loss, typically in their 60s to 80s, develop coping strategies.
Activities should be novel and interesting and can take on a variety of forms, “acting in a play, doing challenging crosswords, anything. If you’re inclined, you might want to volunteer,” Troyer says. Evidence for the 11 leisure activities came from a 2003 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Sadly, watching the latest episode of Dancing with the Stars does not qualify as one of those activities. “In fact, the more time spent watching (TV) was not helpful,” Troyer says.
Also, like stress, divided attention — such as your BlackBerry constantly going off — can have a negative effect on memory. “The good news is that the effects of stress and divided attention are, indeed, temporary,” she says. “So it’s important to decrease stress and avoid distractions in order to maximize memory.”
The endless list of activities required for brain fitness is exactly why Craik, a 75-year-old who considers himself a forgetful person, and his colleagues will hopefully invent that super-succinct brain game. Until then, it’s digital bird watching, dizzying puzzles, broccoli and fish, and an array of other healthy options that could keep us fit as fiddles until the music ends.
SIDEBAR OF TIPS! Since forgetting names and important dates and losing things are all common problems, clinical neuropsychologist Angela Troyer’s seminar at Toronto’s Baycrest geriatric and academic health science centre offers basic education and practical information when it comes to these matters. Visualizing, repeating, writing things down and making information meaningful (with a song or story) — these are painfully obvious memory tools that most people use to some degree. But when it comes to an aging brain, you must be painfully diligent about obvious things.
Remembering dates and future events. Write them down “but not on sticky notes all over your living space. Put them in a single book or in a digital organizer. “Everything in one place,” Troyer advises. If you are particularly scatterbrained or heavily booked, it might help to have both a book and a digital organizer, as long as you always duplicate the information in both.
Forgetting to turn off the stove or lock the door. These are typically the result of not paying a lot of attention. “So whenever you do these actions, you have to be mindful — focus attention on it, say it out loud and visualize it. See yourself doing it,” Troyer says.
Forgetting names. This is a common problem at every age, because it takes a lot of effort to commit names to memory. “Most people say it three or four times to themselves,” Troyer says, “but that’s not as useful as spaced repetition.” Spaced repetition involves repeating the name immediately, then a couple of minutes later, then again several minutes later. You can also help make information meaningful by putting it in a song, or relating it to a similar place or person. “So with names like Jonathan, you have to be more creative. Once you put time into it, it’s amazing how often you can do it.”
Where did I park the car? When you park it, remember to say where it is out loud. Repeat it and try to make the information meaningful. Then when looking for the car later, call upon your visual memory for a picture.
Panicking after you’ve forgotten something. It’s usually too late to try to find something after you lose it and freak out. “It’s best to identify problems and memory strategies before they happen,” Troyer says. So if you know you’re horrible at finding things or remembering appointments, try to find a logical solution for your specific problem.
Losing your belongings. Find a logical place to put each item. Put your slippers in the closet or by the front door. For glasses, get a string and leave them around your neck, Troyer says. “Again, these are about habits. They’re hard to make, but once you have them, they’re harder to break. And those are the best memory habits to have.”
Go easy on the distractions. And remember that hours spent watching TV are hours that could be spent on brain-friendlier activities.