I came across a website called Lumosity.com, which contends to help people improve their brain function through mental exercises and “brain games”. It seems like a neat concept with some definite scientific backing behind the various games, so I decided to test it out and give it a try. It’s worth noting that the science behind the site was pulled together as a research project backed by Stanford, UCSF and other top research institutions. I’ve been looking for something like this for a while (I even somewhat seriously considered buying a Nintendo DS at one point just so I could play Brain Age), since I think that it’s important to keep “exercising” the brain: studies have shown that these types of activities can only help your cognitive functionality and processing power.
Designed by neuroscientists and based on extensive research, Lumosity’s training program promotes cognitive health by selectively challenging cognitive faculties. – Lumosity.com
The process to sign up is easy enough and there is no need to provide any credit card or payment information up front, at least not initially. They provide you with 3 free sessions (1 session per day) allowing you to test out the entire process and a few of their games and see if you really like it. I can say after spending some time with the game over the past few days, I will definitely be buying one of their packages and will hope to continue using them as time goes on (hopefully this won’t become yet another subscription purchase that I buy and then completely forget about in 2 weeks).
Dr. Shelli Kesler and colleagues at Stanford University found improved cognitive performance and corresponding increases in brain activity in the pre-frontal cortex in survivors of childhood cancer following training with Lumosity. Participants who trained with Lumosity showed significantly improved processing speed, cognitive flexibility, verbal and visual declarative memory scores. – NIH.gov
Has anyone else used Lumosity.com? I have heard great things about it so I think I will continue to use it for some time to come. The games they have made me go through are engaging and in some cases quite challenging (one game requires that you quickly decide if a letter-number combo appears at the top of the screen and is even, to hit a key and if a letter-number combo appears at the bottom of the screen and includes a vowel, hit another key). Granted these aren’t video games, but I’m sure with time I could improve some functionality such as spatial memory, mental math, memory retention, etc.