Mike Bantick
Tuesday, 27 January 2009 05:37
Entertainment
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I saw a study the other day supposedly proving that alcohol had little impact on male sexual performance, dispelling forever the ‘brewers droop’ myth. Well now you can throw a French effectiveness study on the Brain Training series of games on the Nintendo DS into the same useless study bucket.
I wonder how these studies get funding sometimes; usually they receive grants from industry groups interested in the findings. So long as they are the right findings. You know the sort, tobacco industry giant funds research into the soothing menthol effect that smoking has on the lungs, used to great effect by many a former Tour De France champion.
From the same camp of ‘well duh!’ studies comes one from France indicating that the Nintendo range of ‘brain training’ titles for the phenomenally successful hand-held DS may not live up to its own claims.
The range of titles includes Big Brain Academy, a series of Brain Training releases as well as peripheral titles such as Maths Training and
CrossworDS .
Big Brain Academy and the Brain Training titles produce a number of puzzles revolving around quick thinking, memory, perception, and simple mathematic skills. There are also a number of the popular Sudoku puzzles available in the first Brain Training release.
As you work through the tasks, the game will rate your ‘brain age’. Quite often there will be some mumbo-jumbo about how your various cortex areas are being stimulated by tasks such as remembering how many people are in a particular on screen house, or scribbling your own version of the Mona Lisa (using a stylus on a 4 cm screen in black and white).
Japanese neuroscientist Ryuta Kawashima lends his smiling bespectacled image and guidance too you as you attempt to lower your brain age through constant use of the DS stylus and microphone.
Celebrities such as Nicole Kidman and Olivia Newton John have been employed to convince (adults in the main) that these games will have you spritely doing lickity-split long division in your head, where up till now you have had problems giving the newspaper guy the correct change.
