Do Brain Games Work?

I was recently asked whether the variety of brain games and brain apps available that are promoted as a means of keeping your brain fit and healthy are any good. 

The answer I gave was that while there does appear to be some support for the notion that cognitive exercise can help maintain cognitive capacity and what neuroscientists call 'cognitive reserve', I am not aware of any hard evidence to support the claims of the brain game manufacturers.  

The best piece of research I could find on the subject was a study by the consumer watchdog Which? in 2009, where they looked at the validity of the claims made by products such as Dr Kawashima's Brain Training.  Coincidentally, I had one bought for me by my children as a Christmas present, but stopped using it after it said I had the brain of an 83 year old!
 

Which? began by asking the manufacturers what the benefits of using their products were and to back their claims up with evidence. They sent this to three experts and asked if they thought the evidence justified the claims. They looked at whether the evidence related directly to the product concerned and whether it had been checked by experts working in the same field and published in a reputable scientific journal.

As an example, one manufacturer claimed that “in just 20 minutes a day, the CD will help increase thinking ability, prevent brain aging, and hone memory, language, concentration, visual/spatial skills and executive function.”
 

One of Nintendo’s claims was that playing the game helps improve blood flow to the frontal cortex and thereby improve "practical intelligence". But the three neuroscientists consulted by Which? said there was no evidence that an increased blood flow had "any functional impact on your life whatsoever."

Which? Editor Martyn Hocking said: "If people enjoy using these games, then they should continue to do so - that's a no-brainer. But if people are under the illusion that these devices are scientifically proven to keep their minds in shape, they need to think again."

The Brain at Work Seminar - Additional Date

As there are very few places remaining on our free seminar on the 8th September, we have added another seminar the following month on Thursday 8th October.

The purpose of the seminar is to demonstrate the tools and materials MyBrain International provide to enable people to incorporate the subject of neuroscience in their own learning and development work.

Attendees at the seminar will also have the opportunity to complete a MiND profile. MiND is the world’s first and only neurometric - a profiling tool based on the latest neurological research that is used to identify the causal link between the psychology of a person and the physiology of their brain. This insight has made MiND a genuinely ground-breaking tool as, for the first time, we are able to go beyond the mere assessment of how people think by providing an explanation of why they think the way they do.

Click here for more information on the seminar and a link to the booking system.

If you would like to attend but are unable to make either of these dates or location, please get in touch so that we can see if we can accommodate you at a future event.

New Evidence of the Brain Body Connection

A new study published in the journal Nature (Louveau et al.,2015) appears to present new evidence of the connectedness of the body to the brain.  Until now it was thought that the lymphatic system, a vital component in our immune system, operated throughout the body but that it did not pass into the tissues of the brain.  However, the discovery announced in this report is that the team have discovered vessels located in the membrane that surrounds the brain and spinal cord (the meninges) that connects the brain to the immune system.

Whereas previously the brain had been thought of as independent of the immune system, these findings demonstrate that the brain is like every other tissue connected to the peripheral immune system.

The finding will hopefully have major implications for every neurological disease that has an immune component to it.  For example, the large protein chunks that build up in the brains of Alzheimer sufferers may be as a result of the failure of these vessels to remove them efficiently.  If that is the case entirely new medicines may emerge to treat Alzheimer’s as a result of these findings.

As with all research, the timescale for it to translate into effective human treatments is relatively slow.  But the discovery of these previously unknown structures is nevertheless a major advance in our understanding of the brain and neurodegenerative illnesses.

Neuro-science or neuro-nonsense?

Today, the brain sells. Take an old idea, put ‘neuro’ in front of it and you have an apparently exciting new product.  It seems that everything from energy drinks to training companies are getting in on the act, there is even a music app you can get for your smartphone that claims to be “scientifically optimised” to boost your attention span by up to 400% using “neuroscience based music”.  Sadly, most of these claims are neuro-nonsense.

MyBrain International is different.  Rather than trying to persuade you with snazzy advertising, we would rather prove our case by giving people the opportunity to experience our offering first-hand.  To do this we are running a free seminar in central London on the 8th September.

Who should attend?
The seminar is open to senior managers, trainers and HR professionals who are interested in learning how use of the MiND tool could benefit their organisations.  More specifically, the seminar will cover the following areas:

• An overview of the neuroscientific research that has led to the identification of the causal link between the psychology of a person and the physiology of their brain.
• An explanation of how that research led to the development of MiND, the world’s first neurometric.
• Details of how MiND differs from psychological profiling tools including an explanation as to why those differences are so valuable in team-building, leadership, coaching and numerous other applications.
• A demonstration of the ways in which MiND and the subject of neuroscience provides people with genuinely new insights into why they are the way they are and in what ways other people may differ.

If you are interested in attending please email enquiries@mybrain.co.uk providing your details and a contact number.  We will then get in touch to provide further details and to confirm your attendance.

CIPD 2015 L&D Show

Thank you to everyone who visited the MyBrain stand at the recent CIPD Learning & Development Show in London.  It was a great pleasure to meet and chat with so many people with a genuine interest neuroscience.

During the two days of the show there was hardly ever a quiet moment - more than 200 people visited the stand and left their business cards.  We were also impressed by how multinational the conference was with people from as far afield as Australia and India.  In total we counted more than 10 nationalities just from the visitors to our stand!

For those people who have booked to complete the MiND Practitioner training we look forward to seeing you soon, and to everyone else we look forward to keeping in touch and to seeing you again sometime in the future.

Cool, risky teenagers

I have two teenagers and anyone who has brought up that age group will know they tend to show off and take riskier decisions when they are around their friends. It is a well researched area that teenagers are more likely to speed when driving, use alcohol and other drugs and even break the law, when with their friends.
 
It isn’t just about peer pressure or daring each other though. Neuroscientists are interested in looking for reasons to explain how the process of making decisions differs when teenagers are in groups. Jason Chein, Professor of Psychology at Temple University, Philadelphia took brain scans of teenagers and adults when they were playing a video game in which they drove a car and had to make decisions as to whether to stop at intersections or speed through into oncoming traffic.

The experiment found that when teenagers had friends watching in another room, they were more likely to speed through even though they were not talking to each other at the time. Simply the awareness that they were being watched by their peers influenced their decisions about risk and the underlying brain activity. The reward centre of the brain was more active when they were being watched, leading to more risky decisions, than when they weren’t being observed by their peers.

It may be that kids are anticipating how cool they will seem after pulling off something perceived as risky. But it could also be that simply being with friends turns on the reward centre of the brain, giving more immediate focus to that rather than the part of the brain that urges caution during split-second decision making. Clearly this is just a preliminary piece of research, but it does make me wonder what I can do to try and get my teenagers to take a risk and get out of bed in the mornings!

Not tonight darling

The clinical trials of the drug flibanserin were the first ever that tested a drug that works at the level of the brain to enhance libido in women reporting low sexual desire.

Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, School of Medicine, University of North Carolina, John Thorp McAllister comments that while flibanserin was a poor antidepressant, it appeared to increase libido in lab trials.

He conducted multiple clinical trials and the women in the studies who took it for low sex drive reported significant improvements in sexual desire and satisfactory sexual experiences. These subjects didn’t report any specific change in mood or depression

The drug is known to alter the level of serotonin in the brain and it shows promise as the first drug to treat female libido in this manner, rather than drugs which increase blood supply to the sex organs. More trials are required but I bet this will be a popular drug when it is able to be subscribed by doctors. And surely increased sex has a positive effect on depression?