The Roots of Modern Brain Training through Games

In 2008, Susanne M. Jaeggi, Martin Buschkuehl, John Jonides, and Walter J. Perrig presented a paper called “Improving fluid intelligence with training on working memory” in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America”.

Jaeggi et al conducted experiments on fluid intelligence by having subjects play a “dual n-back” game. (FAQ at gwern.net). Players are shown a grid which contains a letter in one square. Then a different letter in a different square is shown. Then a third, and players are asked if this third letter/position is the same as the first. A fourth is shown, and players answer if it is the same as the second. And so on. The challenge is to keep new information in memory while recalling and processing an older memory. The experiment was to see if, as players improve at the game, they would see improvements in their “working memory.”

Subjects were given a preliminary IQ test, and then played the game over spans ranging from 8 to 19 days. A subsequent IQ test showed better results, and those who played the game over 19 days showed more improvement than those who played for only 8.

Subsequent experiments, (including two more led by Jaeggi, with different teams) one led by Qiu Feiyue, and one led by Susanne Schweizer have produced similar results. These results contradict the conventional wisdom that IQ is hardwired and immutable. And while research into these methods for improving intelligence s still relatively new, controversies about improving intelligence are forcing us to reconsider just what the nature of intelligence is.

Authorities such as Michael Merzenich and Robert Plomin have provided additional grist for the controversy mill. Merzenich argues that improving one’s ability at a game merely makes on better at the game itself, and doesn’t necessarily translate to improvements in other areas. Plomin points out that since the idea of intelligence being unchangeable is flawed, science that contradicts this notion is not very remarkable.

But a collection of other studies show that, if nothing else, brain stimulation does result in physical changes in the brain, whatever the current definition of “intelligence” might be. Consider a study done of London Taxi drivers, which found that after intense practice for their licensing exams, (up to four years of practice) these cabbies had enlarged areas of the hippocampus. No one’s giving them Nobel prizes, but no one can deny the intellectual achievement of memorizing 25,000 streets.

And then there’s the Nun Study at the University of Kentucky, which has found a correlation between positive emotions and low incidence of Alzheimer’s. Intriguingly, they even found cases where nuns with physical (post-mortem) evidence of disease did not display any cognitive symptoms during their lives.

Perhaps this is pushing the boundaries of what IQ means, but if a group of women are living, happily, thirty and forty years past the average age of death, I’d call that pretty smart.

Is Your Brain Addicted to the Internet?

Probably not.

Many factors go into whether a person becomes addicted to something, including but not limited to genetics and their environment. Some people seem to be prone to addiction than others, and some things are more potentially addictive than others. Since everyone’s on the internet all the time, it makes sense that people are nervous about internet addiction.

But there a competing theories about what addiction even means. An article in internet addiction in Scientific American defines addiction, loosely, as “a disease of the brain that compels someone to obsess over, obtain and abuse something, despite unpleasant health or social effects.” The key word there is “disease.”

Another definition of addiction describes it as increased behavior despite increasing consequences. Note the difference. Rather than focus on compulsion and the nomenclature of disease, this definition focuses on behavior and consequence. It’s a subtle but necessary point: you can have a disease and not know it. Or you can do things that are bad for you but not know why.

So what? So, which definition do you use if you want to treat your so-called addiction, the why or the what? A recent study shows that in people who have self-reported internet addiction, there are physical differences in the brain. So do we find people with altered brains, and yank them off the internet? Or do we look for people who shun their family, friends, work, and other obligations, and toss ‘em in an MRI to see how their brains look, letting the ones go who have “healthy” dorsolateral prefrontal cortexes?

The reason we need to be careful with slap-dash diagnoses of “addiction” is that too broad a brush paints too many, and too fine a brush misattributes otherwise peculiar behaviors. Consider a study done on London Taxi drivers, which show that those who successfully obtain “The Knowledge” (a working mental map of London’s serpentine streets) have a somewhat larger rear hippocampus and a somewhat shrunken frontal hippocampus. Are we going to call them study-addicts and start taking more busses and subways?

The internet is just like anything else—a tool to obtain the things we want. If what we want requires sitting in front of a computer for ten hours a day, six days a week, its probably not the interntet—or your brain—that’s the problem.

But if you’re still worried, why not try a few brain training games, and exercise your mind.