Mind Games Grow in Popularity as Exercise for the Brain

Photo credit:ABC News

Exercising your brain at any age is good for you! Websites like Luminosity provide online games to help jog your memory and keep your thinking sharp. Created by neuroscientists, the games are designed to help train your brain, much like a personal trainer helps you train the muscles in your body at the gym.

After doing this kind of brain training for just 15 minutes a day and completing about 10 hours total, thousands of people reported improvements in their cognitive functioning.

Dan Hurley, a 56-year-old journalist and author of “Smarter: The New Science of Building Brain Power,” saw results after exercising his brain for just 3.5 months on Lumosity. Hurley explains, “Things like crossword puzzles and reading and other things that we all do, they’re great for keeping you at the level you’re at, for maintaining, but if you want to expand your abilities, you have to do things that progressively get harder.”

He adds, “According to my performance on a test of intelligence, my intellectual abilities increased 16 percent. These games are challenging and if they’re not challenging, they’re not working.” So, this kind of brain training isn’t just about maintaining what you have; it’s about actually improving your memory and cognitive functioning.

ABC News, 3/17/14

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