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The Brain Game

Nintendo has come out with a game designed to stimulate the brain with puzzles and arithmetic. It's being marketed to older people, or "grey gamers," as a way to offset dementia and Alzheimers. The game was scheduled for U.S. release on April 17th.

Designed by a prominent neuroscientist, Brain Training for Adults, a package of cerebral workouts aimed at the over-45s by the Japanese game console and software maker Nintendo, is said to improve mental agility and even slow the onset of dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

Players have to complete puzzles as quickly and accurately as possible, including reading literary classics aloud, doing simple arithmetic, drawing, and responding rapidly to deceptively easy teasers using voice-recognition software. The player's "brain age" is then determined. A physically fit, yet cerebrally past-it 30-year-old might be told after his first few attempts that his brain is into its 50s; a retired woman could, over time, end up with a brain age 20 years her junior.

The challenge, to reduce one's brain age, is proving addictive among Japan's baby boomers, many of whom say their only contact with game consoles was limited to bemused glances over the shoulders of grandchildren.

Not everyone's convinced that this sort of brain stimulation will actually do anything for you.

"You might get better at sudoku, but you don't get better at much else," said Guy Claxton, a learning expert at Bristol University.

The kewl part is that some Japanese hospitals actually have the game and the consoles in their waiting rooms and wards. Not only don't they have the PMRC and other crazy orgs trying to sell the "video games breed violence" meme, but they're actually providing access to video games to their sick people. And the older generation is actually interested in playing the games. It's like an alternate reality over there.

If puzzles help at all with slowing down the occurrence of dementia, i wish i could get a Chinese language version of it and get some of my family members interested. It would make the holidays more interesting, too.

By min | May 12, 2006, 8:54 AM | Science & Video Games


Comments

Oh man. I don't want this game. I don't want to know how dumb i am.