Your Brain's Favorite Videogame?

The Nintendo DS handheld gaming system has sold fairly well here in the U.S., but it’s practically on fire in Japan, where its games regularly dominate the weekly top-5 sales charts. The console itself has sold almost two million units so far this year (its closest competitor, the PlayStation 2, has sold only 500,000). Its success is due in large part to its uniquely unconventional games, especially Brain Age, a quirky educational title designed with the help of a Japanese neuroscientist that has dominated the Japanese market. The U.S. version was released last week.

The game is fairly simple—you perform a variety of memory and cognition-based mini games, such as counting the number of people in a house as you watch them enter and exit, or identifying the number of syllables in a spoken phrase, all of which are supposedly beneficial to your brain’s overall health. The game then determines how “old” your brain is according to your highest scores (the younger your brain, the better).

Despite a study by a psychologist at the University of Virginia claiming that the actual mental benefits of Brain Age are almost nil, the game’s success (especially among adults and even seniors, a valuable and untapped gaming market) is already spawning imitators. Sega has a similar title for the PSP currently in the works, and the Japan-only Brain Age sequel is selling just as well as the original.

What do you think? Can your mind really benefit from Brain Age, or is this all just a clever way to sell more games? Sound off in the “Comments” section below. —John Mahoney

 

Comments

[Dan]

Whether or not it will benefit the brain is hard to say. Though, personally no longer being in school and no longer having to focus my mental energy on things with the same intensity, I can feel my mind getting more sluggish as the days tick past. If anything it may just keep the gears in your head greased to prevent things from running down.

Of course, all of that could probably be undone in one night of heavy drinking. Maybe they should advertise it as a post-hangover cure to get back to equilibrium.

part of a complete breakfast: coffee, aspirin, brain age.

[damjan]

Games have kept our brains alive since the early days of tennis (two rectangles and one dot). With the slow start as only reflex trainers, games have evolved to terrifyingly complex brain training tools, this game in particular is not so revolutionary, except for the fact that it publicly claims as part of the marketing plan, that it is good for your brain. Some games have evolved computer A.I so much, that gamers are now involved in different and complex social puzzles, contributing to great brain stamina at all levels of intelligence.

[John]

It's true--humans have been gaming in various forms for a long, long time, which has undoubtedly played a role in the brain's development. And even if Brain Age doesn't have any big benefits, it probably can't hurt, right? I guess parents everywhere will have to find a substitue for the "those games will rot your brain!" excuse.

[Micah]

Everytime something like this happens, I buy a new game system. There is always that game that makes me buy the system.

Grand Theft Auto for the Playstation 2

Oblivion for the Xbox 360

Now this.