*** It’s safe to say that mental fitness has graduated in status from cottage to full-blown industry.** It’s grown fast, and without much oversight.*
Anyone can move in to your town and set up a brain “gym,” just as anyone can set up a mental fitness “club” on the internet, and there’s no one around to validate the “lose ten years off your memory in just seven sessions” claims that often come with them.* So far there is no industry standard, and no watchdog group.
** *This is not a problem if you don’t really care if there is any science behind the exercises you’re doing, or if they are having a deeper effect than giving you pleasure and making you feel that you are taking charge of your life.* I have games on my Ipod that are entertaining and seem to stretch my brain, but I’m under no illusion that they will, for instance, boost my score on a standardized memory test or, more crucially, help me remember to bring home brown sugar and beets from the market.
** *One way that companies get around the fact that their products are not backed up by rigorous, unbiased science, is to put together what they call a scientific advisory board, as if having people with doctorates or medical degrees* on their masthead automatically confers authenticity.* Caveat Emptor.
** *As I mentioned earlier, I am a fan of a website called My Brain Trainer that has lots of engaging exercises.* Anecdotally—and this is the key word—people say that doing these exercises makes them “sharper.”* This may or may not be true, and there is no way to know, and no way to know what, precisely, sharper means.* On the site there is reference to a study done five years at place called the* DeLos Mind-Body Institute in Texas.* There were fifty subjects in all,* ages 44-48, some assigned to a control group, the others to do 21 sessions of MBT exercises.* Their IQ was tested using something called Virtual Knowledge software.* After a month, according to the researcher, Dr. Marshall Voris, those doing the brain exercises had a nine-point increase in IQ, while the control group had a 1 percent increase. *
** *This is an impressive outcome, until you devote a corner of your own IQ to sorting it out.* There were fifty participants, total, and it’s not clear how many were controls and how many did the exercise.* Whatever the breakdown, the number itself is probably too small to draw widely applicable inferences from.* But, more important is the sample itself:* the fifty subjects are between 44 and 48 years old, which is hardly a random sample.* Enough said.
** *This is not to say that brain trainers don’t work, just that the measures that are used to sell them to you are often less than satisfying.* One question that you have to ask yourself before plunking down your cash is “what do I want to get out of this.”* If you’re hoping for some reason to raise your score on an IQ test, that’s one thing.* If you want to bring home brown sugar and beets, that’s another.
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