Fight age-related cognitive decline by exercising your brain with Lumosity

Posted on June 8, 2007
Filed Under Health | Leave a Comment

As you get older, your brain loses its ability to process information like it used to when you were young. The decline in mental abilities including memory and attention begins much sooner than you imagine. Scientists agree that a person’s mental health begins to deteriorate in the early thirties and for some cognitive functions even earlier in the late twenties. Mathematicians already know this since they consider themselves old and incapable of achieving much after the age of thirty. Today, there is a huge industry offering to help maintain mental acuity as we age. Take for example, the myriad of bestselling Sudoku puzzles, crosswords and dozens of brain-related self-help titles; not to mention of course the vitamin supplements and herbal brain tonics found on pharmacy counters.

Nevertheless, research shows that a person can maintain mental ability if he/she exercises the brain at a regular basis. As a result, a group of neuroscientists from Stanford university have created Lumosity, a website specifically designed to exercise your brain via the playing of games. This might remind you of Nintendo’s Brain Age video game that promises to keep one’s brain activity via fun activities and game playing although the company makes no scientific claims about their product. Similarly, Lumosity is like a fitness program for your brain that is the result of year of scientific study. You can start by taking the Lumosity IQ test which amounts to a brief assessment of your mental health. The test involves playing 3 different simple games that test your memory, attention and processing speed. I took the test and as the images reveal my total score was 131 which, I guess, puts me above average; by the way, I am 32 years old (I get the feeling that I should be doing better than that but all the TV watching during my younger year probably hasn’t helped!)

Lumosity.com offers to help you improve your mental health by participating in 30 game playing sessions. I have signed up and I will go through the program and then re-test myself to see if it actually helped me improve my score. It should be fun and if the scientists are correct then I will come out of all these with a sharper brain. Hey, it might actually help me improve the quality of this blog! Lumosity is currently undergoing Beta testing (which is to say that the product is not in its final version) and as such it is free for anyone to sign up for it. Later it will require payment so if you want to test it then better hurry and sign up for it.

Stay tuned for an update when I am done with the program.

Bookmark: