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SAN FRANCISCO – The popularity of brain training games has great appeal to aging baby boomers who may be having second thoughts about some of those mind-altering experiences of their now distant youth. The real value of these over-engineered video games, however, may not be for lapsed hippies: Research has shown that the games may improve the mental functioning of the learning disabled and the memory impaired – and now comes word that they may reduce the seemingly intractable symptoms of schizophrenia.

Schizophrenics suffer from a long list of cognitive deficits that may affect attention, memory and the ability to set priorities and manage everyday affairs.

One answer may lie in computerized brain-training software, according to researchers at the University of California at San Francisco, who have successfully used such software from Posit Science (a company established by neuroscience pioneer Michael Merzenich) to improve cognition in schizophrenics.

The scientists conducted a study in which they split a group of 32 people diagnosed with schizophrenia in half: one group played ordinary video games and members of the other were put through 20 hours of training in exercises that switched tasks rapidly or picked out novel objects to improve a subject’s ability to categorize, predict or link information.

Their findings, presented yesterday at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society meeting here: the brain-trained group experienced statistically significant improvement in measures of inhibition (impulse control) and non-verbal working memory (the brain's RAM, where info is temporarily stored). There were no statistically significant improvements, however, in the speed of mental processing , verbal learning or verbal working memory. This work builds on previous studies that show the same software improved cognition in auditory processing.

Image courtesy of k0a1a.net via Flickr

7 Comments

1. 1. cognitivecentre 07:56 AM 3/25/09

   An exciting development! Improving the cognitive skills of schizophrenics ahs been the goal of a small group program that teaches cognitive skills to patients in secure hospitals in England, Scotland, Germany and Switzerland. It is based on the cognitive skills training program - "Reasoning and Rehabilitation" - that has taught cognitive skills to more than seventeen thousand individuals in seventeen countries since 1986 and has been supported by many international independent evaluations, cost-benefit analyses and metanalyses. web-site: www.cognitivecentre.ca.

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2. 2. Integral 12:02 PM 3/25/09

   When I read that the improvement was only statistically significant, I tend to believe that it was quite small , 5% or 6%, otherwise they would have given the actual percentage of improvement. As a social worker who runs a program for psychotic disorders, any improvement is helpful but I will withold my excitement until I see that this intervention produces a bigger effect.

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3. 3. mindsparke 04:19 PM 3/25/09

   This news also tallies with a recent discovery (by neuroscientists at the Picower Institute of Learning and Memory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) that schizophrenia and other mental disorders are linked to the inhibition of neurogenesis (new cell growth). So therefore, if a brain exercise can produce new cells (which was also recently shown by scientists at the Karolinska Institutet) then it would seem that brain training may be a viable therapy.
   
   I expect that this whole field will be revolutionized in the next ten years as we now have much of the science in place to analyze the mechanics and measure the changes.
   
   One of the most promising forms of brain training seems to be working-memory training, and particularly training two aspects of working memory at once, such as Jaeggi and Buschkuehl did in their study last year.
   
   Martin Walker
   www.mindsparke.com

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4. 4. jtuf 09:11 PM 3/25/09

   This is great news. Non-drug treatments are best.

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5. 5. Jcacrs 12:41 AM 5/3/09

   I discovered a website devoted to seniors called www.eldergadget.com
   where I discovered that older adults can improve memory and attention by training on computerized brain exercises according to study data presented at the annual meeting of the American Geriatrics Society in Chicago.

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6. 6. pcman 06:50 AM 7/30/09

   Great news.
   If you want to keep your brain in fitness you should play brain training games.
   You can find these games for free at www.mind360.com/

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7. 7. davidsyw 08:13 PM 10/30/10

   For those who might be interested, here are links for <a href="http://this1that1whatever.com/miscellany/sudoku/">Sudoku puzzles to solve (http://this1that1whatever.com/miscellany/sudoku/)</a> and <a href="http://this1that1whatever.com/miscellany/sliding-puzzles/">sliding puzzles to solve (http://this1that1whatever.com/miscellany/sliding-puzzles/)</a>, along with other mind-bending brain teasers to exercise the brain.

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