Gadgetory

the thinking behind brain training get it is that playing scientifically designed games overtime can enhance your memory improve your attention span and basically just make you smarter do you want to give this one a try no what what words start with J I that's bleep hilarious pick them up oh boy these are hard we visited two San francisco-based companies on the leading edge of this research Lumosity and posit science to get a closer look so right now we're looking at your your brain profile at Lumosity neuro scientists have developed games that exploit the brain's plasticity or in other words its ability to learn new things so every time you're seeing something or having a conversation learning something new there's a physical change in your brain that takes place that's how a memory is captured that's how you learn and get better at things a lot of us have been told that five five years old or a certain age we've done all the learning we can or a brain is sort of done developing yeah I really don't think that's the case yeah it's not I mean that was the basic understanding among psychologists and neuroscientists for a long time the more recent science over the past couple decades shows that brains actually change pretty fundamentally throughout your entire life so by playing these games the research suggests you're working out your brain kind of like going to the gym but does it actually work I put Lumosity system to the test first there's a baseline assessment test so I can measure where I am cognitively in areas like memory speed and attention it did not go well oh no answer as many math problems as you can in 45 seconds one plus seven and then it's Abe who can do that seven times nine oh I don't correct 20 incorrect one actually for me that's pretty freakin good as far as math goes because you know what they say journalists plus this number it equals misstatements next actually so shake his head out of the corner by the way I'm camera guy anyways no dammit I like say one thing and there my favorite is a different thing generating my brain performance report I'm a code cracker as a code cracker you are sharp analytical and cunning like they say that the average brainpower score for my age range is 100 and mine is 96 and this is hurtful my 96 it's all got a little share with friends button I don't think so the brain training trend it isn't just about solving math problems or unscrambling puzzles really fast that posit science they're working on software that will help you develop better people skills like facial recognition good for those parties where you kinda know the names of your guests or and I like this one identifying emotions where we'll just click one I kind of get it going I'm gonna do what I really want to do is just take the core parts of the brain that are involved in this kind of task and work them out and strengthen them and make them sharper just say like look that's right all right let's try it here that's our about so easy ones good neutral is an option also some people aren't making any except I was wondering if neutral is an option I was happy that one's pretty easy yeah smiles are pretty easy today you're a good at this awesome so I've been brain training for about a week I have a nice little streak going I've probably put in about five hours of training since I first started and now I'm going to take the brain performance test over again to see if I've improved the folks that Lumosity did say that I might not see an improvement in my score I might just see improvement in my overall behavior in my life but I can't lie I'm hoping to see improvement in my score that's why I'm going to start the test now and this time I'm not talking to you guys concentrate so the moment of truth has arrived am i any smarter oh I got the same score and it says my score is 96 guess it hasn't changed I haven't gotten any smarter now to be fair the researchers say I did need to brain train for at least 10 hours and I probably did about half that however I have noticed that the brain training used to make me really tired when I would start playing the games I felt totally exhausted and then one night I had this hour-long epic brain training session and I felt totally energized afterward and I actually cleaned up my whole house so if that's the improvement that I get I will take it the house is clean there are skeptics of brain training including me I mean if you do anything long enough you will get better at it it's kind of like the outliers argument from Malcolm Gladwell's book if you practice anything for 10,000 hours you'll be an expert so for me the verdict is still out on whether this brain training thing actually works or if I just practice hard enough I'll get better at games 386 I guess that's a victory all on its own that sounds good to me