Game claims I'm smarter, as long as I say 'buh-loo'
By Anonymous Thursday, September 14, 2006, 12:17 AM EDT
I've been walking around waiting for someone to notice how much smarter I am. It hasn't happened yet. I guess many of us genius types go unrecognized.
I'm sure I'm much brighter because I've been playing the game "Brain Age" for the Nintendo DS, and the company promises that playing a few minutes every day will make me smarter.
Technically, they say it will give me a younger brain. I'm hoping to get my gray matter back to my teen years, because I knew all of the answers to life's mysteries then.
"Brain Age" is an interesting little game. It has no flashy graphics, no guns, not much of what you'd call action. But it was the No. 3-selling game in June, according to market researcher NPD Group.
The game was a huge hit for Nintendo in Japan, but video game pundits doubted it would do well here. Many tech trends in Japan fail to catch on over on this side of the Pacific, but this one has.
Nintendo is trying to reach people who have never played games or who haven't played them for years. "Brain Age" is an early, and apparently successful, example of the strategy.
To be honest, I enjoyed it more than I expected. I might not have even tried it if I had realized how much math it involved.
I don't know whether my brain is really rejuvenated by completing number, word and other tasks under the pressure of a ticking clock, but there's quite a bit of real science behind the game, based on the work of Japanese brain researcher Ryuta Kawashima.
Kawashima was an early critic of video games, saying they stimulated the wrong parts of the brain. Much of his work has focused on the benefits of stimulating a part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex.
"Brain Age" is the result of his collaboration with Nintendo to develop a series of puzzles and exercises for the DS to stimulate the targeted region. The program includes training, a brain-age check and Sudoku puzzles. Supposedly, all of the elements have been tested in the lab to verify their effect on the brain.
I started out by taking the brain-age test. A series of simple math problems appeared on the screen. As soon as I answered one, the next would scroll up. You know, it's been a long time since I learned the multiplication tables. I had to stop and think on a couple of them. Tick. Tick. Tick. Then, in my haste, I multiplied instead of adding a couple of times. I wasn't off to a very good start.
The next test involved a series of words flashing on the screen. I was told to say out loud the color of the text. When the word "red" appears in blue type, it's awfully hard not to say "red."
In the last test, a couple of little gingerbread people ran onto the screen. A house dropped out of the sky. Some more people ran into the house, some ran out, some more ran in. My task was to keep track of how many remained inside. The first couple of times were easy. Then they started to run faster and they came and went at the same time.
"Brain Age" tallied the results. Suffice it to say that my score put me well past the qualifying age for Social Security.
A disembodied cartoon rendition of Kawashima's head urged me not to despair.
The game isn't perfect. The handwriting technology failed to recognize some correct math answers, and the accuracy for written words was even lower. But the most maddening bug was in the speech recognition.
It particularly struggled with the word "blue." I had to repeat the correct answer several times before I got credit. Infusions of profanity didn't seem to help. I finally figured out that it preferred an extra syllable: "buh-loo."
Despite the shortcomings, "Brain Age" is addictive. I checked in and did my training almost every day for several weeks and my score came down, not just to my real age, but almost 10 years below.
Who knows whether my brain got any younger? I'm sure that familiarity with the exercises and learning to avoid the quirks in the handwriting and speech-recognition software helped lower my score. Every day it told me I was getting smarter and younger. Who's going to argue with that?
I'm pretty sure that "Brain Age" hasn't achieved hit status based on sales to traditional young-male game players. So they must be making progress in reaching an older, more diverse demographic.
To check the theory, I took the DS along on a recent trip to my parents' house. I knew that my mother was something of a Sudoku fan. I loaded up the Sudoku section in "Brain Age" and waved it under her nose. She took to it like a mouse to cheese. After solving a couple of the puzzles, she started checking out the game's other features.
We didn't hear much from Mom for the next couple of hours, at least not until she had to start speaking the names of colors.
I noticed that she had some of the same problems I did. "BLUE, BLUE, BLUE - oh, this is maddening," she said, with a civility that was no more helpful than my profanity.
I could have told her to try pronouncing it "buh-loo," but she'd already announced that her brain age was very near to her real age and perilously close to my initial score. She was on a pace to make her mind younger than mine, and she'd have to do it without my help. After all, Nintendo never promised that the game would make my brain any nicer.
I'm sure I'm much brighter because I've been playing the game "Brain Age" for the Nintendo DS, and the company promises that playing a few minutes every day will make me smarter.
Technically, they say it will give me a younger brain. I'm hoping to get my gray matter back to my teen years, because I knew all of the answers to life's mysteries then.
"Brain Age" is an interesting little game. It has no flashy graphics, no guns, not much of what you'd call action. But it was the No. 3-selling game in June, according to market researcher NPD Group.
The game was a huge hit for Nintendo in Japan, but video game pundits doubted it would do well here. Many tech trends in Japan fail to catch on over on this side of the Pacific, but this one has.
Nintendo is trying to reach people who have never played games or who haven't played them for years. "Brain Age" is an early, and apparently successful, example of the strategy.
To be honest, I enjoyed it more than I expected. I might not have even tried it if I had realized how much math it involved.
I don't know whether my brain is really rejuvenated by completing number, word and other tasks under the pressure of a ticking clock, but there's quite a bit of real science behind the game, based on the work of Japanese brain researcher Ryuta Kawashima.
Kawashima was an early critic of video games, saying they stimulated the wrong parts of the brain. Much of his work has focused on the benefits of stimulating a part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex.
"Brain Age" is the result of his collaboration with Nintendo to develop a series of puzzles and exercises for the DS to stimulate the targeted region. The program includes training, a brain-age check and Sudoku puzzles. Supposedly, all of the elements have been tested in the lab to verify their effect on the brain.
I started out by taking the brain-age test. A series of simple math problems appeared on the screen. As soon as I answered one, the next would scroll up. You know, it's been a long time since I learned the multiplication tables. I had to stop and think on a couple of them. Tick. Tick. Tick. Then, in my haste, I multiplied instead of adding a couple of times. I wasn't off to a very good start.
The next test involved a series of words flashing on the screen. I was told to say out loud the color of the text. When the word "red" appears in blue type, it's awfully hard not to say "red."
In the last test, a couple of little gingerbread people ran onto the screen. A house dropped out of the sky. Some more people ran into the house, some ran out, some more ran in. My task was to keep track of how many remained inside. The first couple of times were easy. Then they started to run faster and they came and went at the same time.
"Brain Age" tallied the results. Suffice it to say that my score put me well past the qualifying age for Social Security.
A disembodied cartoon rendition of Kawashima's head urged me not to despair.
The game isn't perfect. The handwriting technology failed to recognize some correct math answers, and the accuracy for written words was even lower. But the most maddening bug was in the speech recognition.
It particularly struggled with the word "blue." I had to repeat the correct answer several times before I got credit. Infusions of profanity didn't seem to help. I finally figured out that it preferred an extra syllable: "buh-loo."
Despite the shortcomings, "Brain Age" is addictive. I checked in and did my training almost every day for several weeks and my score came down, not just to my real age, but almost 10 years below.
Who knows whether my brain got any younger? I'm sure that familiarity with the exercises and learning to avoid the quirks in the handwriting and speech-recognition software helped lower my score. Every day it told me I was getting smarter and younger. Who's going to argue with that?
I'm pretty sure that "Brain Age" hasn't achieved hit status based on sales to traditional young-male game players. So they must be making progress in reaching an older, more diverse demographic.
To check the theory, I took the DS along on a recent trip to my parents' house. I knew that my mother was something of a Sudoku fan. I loaded up the Sudoku section in "Brain Age" and waved it under her nose. She took to it like a mouse to cheese. After solving a couple of the puzzles, she started checking out the game's other features.
We didn't hear much from Mom for the next couple of hours, at least not until she had to start speaking the names of colors.
I noticed that she had some of the same problems I did. "BLUE, BLUE, BLUE - oh, this is maddening," she said, with a civility that was no more helpful than my profanity.
I could have told her to try pronouncing it "buh-loo," but she'd already announced that her brain age was very near to her real age and perilously close to my initial score. She was on a pace to make her mind younger than mine, and she'd have to do it without my help. After all, Nintendo never promised that the game would make my brain any nicer.
