Study: Brain games don't make you smarter

Study: Brain games don't make you smarter
AP
By MARIA CHENG, AP Medical Writer Maria Cheng, Ap Medical Writer – 22 mins ago

LONDON – People playing computer games to train their brains might as well be playing Super Mario, new research suggests.

In a six-week study, experts found people who played online games designed to improve their cognitive skills didn't get any smarter.

Researchers recruited participants from viewers of the BBC's science show "Bang Goes the Theory." More than 8,600 people aged 18 to 60 were asked to play online brain games designed by the researchers to improve their memory, reasoning and other skills for at least 10 minutes a day, three times a week.

They were compared to more than 2,700 people who didn't play any brain games, but spent a similar amount of time surfing the Internet and answering general knowledge questions. All participants were given a sort of I.Q. test before and after the experiment.

Researchers said the people who did the brain training didn't do any better on the test after six weeks than people who had simply been on the Internet. On some sections of the test, the people who surfed the Net scored higher than those playing the games.

The study was paid for by the BBC and published online Tuesday by the journal Nature.

"If you're (playing these games) because they're fun, that's absolutely fine," said Adrian Owen, assistant director of the Cognition and Brain Sciences unit at Britain's Medical Research Council, the study's lead author. "But if you're expecting (these games) to improve your I.Q., our data suggests this isn't the case," he said during a press briefing on Tuesday.

One maker of brain games said the BBC study did not apply to its products. Steve Aldrich, CEO of Posit Science, said the company's games, some of which were funded in part by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, have been proven to boost brain power.

"Their conclusion would be like saying, 'I cannot run a mile in under 4 minutes and therefore it is impossible to do so," Aldrich said.

Posit Science has published research in journals including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showing their games improved memory in older people.

Computer games available online and marketed by companies like Nintendo that supposedly enhance memory, reasoning and other cognitive skills are played by millions of people worldwide, though few studies have examined if the games work.

"There is precious little evidence to suggest the skills used in these games transfer to the real world," said Art Kramer, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Illinois. He was not linked to the study and has no ties to any companies that make brain training games.

Kramer had several reservations about the BBC study's methodology and said some brain games had small effects in improving people's cognitive skills. "Learning is very specific," he said. "Unless the component you are trained in actually exists in the real world, any transfer will be pretty minimal."

Instead of playing brain games, Kramer said people would be better off getting some exercise. He said physical activity can spark new connections between neurons and produce new brain cells. "Fitness changes the building blocks of the brain's structure," he said.

Still, Kramer said some brain training games worked better than others. He said some games made by Posit Science had shown modest benefits, including improved memory in older people.

Other experts said brain games might be useful, but only if they weren't fun.

"If you set the level for these games to a very high level where you don't get the answers very often and it really annoys you, then it may be useful," said Philip Adey, an emeritus professor of psychology and neuroscience at King's College in London.

If people are enjoying the brain games, Adey said they probably aren't being challenged and might as well be playing a regular video game.

He said people should consider learning a new language or sport if they really wanted to improve their brain power. "To stimulate the intellect, you need a real challenge," Adey said, adding computer games were not an easy shortcut. "Getting smart is hard work."

The Science of Generosity

The Science of Generosity
By Paul J. Zak
Would you help this child?
Published on November 22, 2009
I just finished reading Theodore Malloch's wonderful new book Being Generous (Templeton Press, 2009) that investigates the reasons for and results of generosity. The book draws on a variety of evidence to show that generosity is not only good for society, but good for the individual. Throughout this inspiring book, pithy and interesting one page biographies appear of well-known givers and their motivations for helping others. These range from Johann Sebastian Bach, John D. Rockefeller, and Mother Theresa to Bill and Melinda Gates.
Giving USA reports that in 2005, individuals in the US gave $199 billion dollars to charity. In the same year, 65 million Americans spent an average of 50 hours volunteering to help others. Using the average US hourly wage, this constitutes an additional charitable donation valued at $60 billion. While this pales in comparison to the federal deficit, $259 billion is a big chunk of change. Could science explain this extraordinary generosity?

Bottom of Form
My lab has been investigating the biological basis for generosity, focusing on the neuroactive hormone oxytocin. We were specifically interested in generosity, or "liberality in giving," rather than people simply giving small gifts to others. Many people have an urge to give just a bit, but we wanted to know why someone would ever give more than they had to. We used a task called the Ultimatum Game in which people are randomly and anonymously paired by computer in a large lab. After extensive instruction and without a speck of deception, people are endowed with a sum of money like $40 and then asked to propose a split of this money to the other person in their pair. No communication before or after the proposal is allowed. The receiver then decides if s/he wants to accept the proposal or reject it. If accepted, the money is paid privately to each person and the experiment ends. But, if the proposal is rejected, both individuals earn nothing.
How much would you offer as a split? In Western countries, offers less than 30% of the endowment are nearly always rejected. Why? Easy--it is simply unfair. We turned this question on its head: why would anyone offer more than one needs to have the offer accepted? We did this by having each person make decisions both as proposer and to identify their smallest acceptable offer as responder. Later, we randomized which role they would actually play and this determined their earnings. Generosity is the difference between what one offers and the smallest amount one is willing to accept.
I had a hunch that oxytocin, which I had already shown causes us to trust others as I discussed in a recent article in Scientific American would also make people generous. So, we infused 40IU oxytocin into half the participants using a nasal spray, and similarly administered salt water to the other half, without them knowing which one they had gotten. They then made decisions in the Ultimatum Game. In a 2007 publication, my team reported that oxytocin increased generosity by 80% compared to the placebo group.
This was a huge effect in an experiment where we tormented people by putting two teaspoons of liquid up their noses. The next question was why oxytocin caused generosity.
Giving to others is often prompted by understanding their perspective. How would you feel if you lost your house to a hurricane or fire, or found yourself homeless after looking for work for a year. We can image how awful these situations would be and this motivates us to help others. Shortly after the August 2005 hurricane Katrina disaster I asked my lab who had donated money to the relief efforts. Several students raised their hands and when I asked them why, most related highly emotional stories of suffering they had seen on TV. The stories were often so emotion-laden that their eyes teared up on the telling.
This gave me and my graduate student Jorge Barraza an idea to run an experiment that simulated this effect. We had participants watch one of two 100 second videos. Both videos feature a father with his four year old son. The son is bald from chemotherapy due to his terminal brain cancer. In the emotional video, the father discussion how it feels to know his son is dying. In the neutral video, the father and son are having a day at the zoo and cancer and death are not mentioned. You can see the video in an earlier PT Blog I wrote. I showed the emotional video recently to group of lawyers at a conference and one-third of them cried so much I had to stop my lecture. If it makes lawyers cry, you know that regular humans are really affected by it.
We drew blood before and after people watched one of the two videos and found that doing nothing more watching the emotional video produced a huge 157% spike in oxytocin levels. Oxytocin levels actually fell for those who watched the neutral video. We then asked people how they felt after seeing the videos. For the emotional video, the change in oxytocin was correlated with feelings of empathy (after we controlled for the distress people reported that correlated with the stress hormone cortisol). Oxytocin connects us to others and lets us understand their emotions.
The most amazing part was that after the videos people made decisions in the Ultimatum Game so we could see if empathic engagement would make people more generous towards another person in the lab. It did. Generosity towards another meant that the giver earned less money for his or her participation in this long and unpleasant experiment.
As participants were leaving the experiment, we also gave them a chance to donate some of their earnings to charity. One-third of the participants did so, averaging a six dollar donation (this was about one-quarter of the average earnings). Who donated? Those who were the most generous and most empathically engaged by the video.
It may very well be the case that those profiled in Being Generous release more oxytocin than others and this partially explains their generosity. Oxytocin connects us to others and social connections are a powerful way to increase one's own happiness. If you want to connect to others, being generous is a great start. You can follow Malloch in this--he is donating all book royalties to the charity portal Global Giving. If you would like to choose a project to donate to, go to www.globalgiving. com. You just might feel the joy of generosity.
---Paul J. Zak is a neuroeconomist and director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, CA
(Thanks for Anand Damma of Keltronians yahoo group)

Calcutta if you must exile me wound my lips before I go

Calcutta if you must exile me wound my lips before I go

only words remain and the gentle touch of your finger on my lips Calcutta
burn my eyes before I go into the night

the headless corpse in a Dhakuria bylane the battered youth his brains blown
out and the silent vigil that takes you to Pataldanga Lane where they
will gun you down without vengeance or hate

Calcutta if you must exile me burn my eyes before I go

they will pull you down from the Ochterlony monument and torture each broken
rib beneath your upthrust breasts they will tear the anguish from
your sullen eyes and thrust the bayonet between your thighs

Calcutta they will tear you apart Jarasandha-like
they will tie your hands on either side and hang you from a wordless cross
and when your silence protests they will execute all the words that
you met and synchronised Calcutta they will burn you at the stake

Calcutta flex the vengeance in your thighs and burn silently in the despair
of flesh
if you feel like suicide take a rickshaw to Sonagachhi and share the sullen
pride in the eyes of women who have wilfully died

wait for me outside the Ujjala theatre and I will bring you the blood of that
armless leper who went mad before hunger and death met in his wounds

I will show you the fatigue of that woman who died near Chitpur out of sheer
boredom and the cages of Burrabazar where passion hides in the
wrinkles of virgins who have aged waiting for a sexless war that
never came
only obscene lust remains in their eyes after time has wintered their
exacting thighs and I will show you the hawker who died with Calcutta
in his eyes
Calcutta if you must exile me destroy my sanity before I go