How Effective is Brain Training

Is your memory as good as it was twenty years ago? If I had to guess, I'd probably say no. Are you as good at math calculations as you were when you were in school? Again, I'd probably guess at no. A decrease in memory can be a result of many factors including, stress, preoccupation, age, illness or just a busy lifestyle. Is there any way we can change this and get back the skills and memory we had when we were young? Probably not, but many believe that we can improve on them to a noticeable degree with the use of brain training.

Brain training is exactly what the name implies. It's a method of training the brain to make its functions sharper and our memory better. We train it through repetition and challenges. When we were back in school learning math, we wouldn't be training our brains very much if we continued to do nothing more than "two plus two is four" day after day. It would be a challenge the first couple of times, but once it was mastered, it would be repetitive and no longer a challenge to our brain. This is why brain training must be new and challenging to be effective.

So, how effective is brain training software and games? Are they something we need or does brain training happen automatically any time we provide our brains with new challenges? This is a debate that's been going on for a few years now. While the industries that are selling the brain training software and games claim they'll help to ward off the symptoms of Alzheimer's, dementia or just poor memory due to the aging process, many scientists claim this to be propaganda and an industry just trying to make a buck off their products.

After all, if you were told your memory would stay as it was when you were young by using a certain product, chances are good that you'd rush out and buy that product. The results of many studies by the critics have them believing that our brains would receive training any time we gave it a challenge, so why do we need brain training software and games?

Their theories were based on the results of tests done on children. Some of the children used brain training games while others were given books to read and puzzles to complete. At the end of the seven week study, the children using the brain training software did not show any better memory than those doing the puzzles and reading. Their determinations were that any time we do something over and over, we get better at it, whether it's reading a new book, doing a puzzle or learning a new skill. Therefore, their belief was that we can provide our own brain training.