Nintendo's Brain Age: Can You Really Improve Brain Performance With Your Kid's Handheld Video Game?

Nintendo's "Brain Age" has created an entirely new video game category: games for middle aged people worried about their brain health. This week Time magazine wrote that "toy and gaming companies are starting to court the boomer generation with products claiming to help sharpen memory and cognitive ability." How does the market leader stack up? To find out I subjected my brain to a rigorous Brain Age workout.

Brain Age

Brain Age is available for $18 - $20 but only runs on the Nintendo DS handheld system.* In an interesting twist, for Brain Age you hold the DS vertically, with one of its two screens on either side of the center hinge. Puzzles often appear on the left screen and you write your answers, using the DS stylus, on the right screen.

The Good

The best parts of Brain Age are those you see first: the Brain Age test and the graphs that let you track your improvement over time. Your "brain age" is calculated based on your performance in two tests. The first is a "Stroop test," where colored words appear on the screen one at a time. Your task is to say the correct color (into the DS's built-in microphone) for each word in the sequence. The trick is that the words that appear on the screen are the same as the colors you are trying to identify -- red, yellow, blue, and black -- but that the word "yellow" will be colored blue (so the correct answer is "blue").

The second part of the Brain Age test is twenty simple math problems, which you try to solve as fast as possible with no errors.

When you're done, you get your brain age in years -- mine is ten years above my actual age, based on how subjects performed on the same tests conducted by Japanese brain researcher Ryuta Kawashima. Your score is charted and you can see how it changes (for the better -- you hope) over time.

The Disappointing

After the initial test you're invited to begin some daily brain exercises, and this is where the game begins to fall apart. Some are fun for a while -- the blizzard of math problems, and a memory exercise -- but there are only four available initially (five more unlock with higher scores), and the novelty wears thin very quickly. One of the exercises is reading aloud from text on the screen -- in one case, Jane Austen's Emma. Do I need a game system for that?

There's also a separate Sudoku module, but it's limited compared to other products on other platforms. You can choose only 36 basic and 36 intermediate puzzles. Once you've worked through them, you're done. By comparison, Astraware Sudoku (for Palm OS / Treo, Windows Mobile, and Pocket PC) has much more control over difficulty level, a better interface, and virtually no limit to the number of puzzles.

Along with watching your "brain age" improve, you get a stamp for every day you do a brain workout. It's a nice incentive to stick with the program.

Although I have not tried it, another way to keep your Brain Age training program interesting could be to compete in the math games against other DS owners over the built-in wireless connection. Only one of the units needs to have the Brain Age cartridge.

Does Brain Age Work?

Most people who review Brain Age on Amazon report improvements in the "brain age." Does this type of regimen really improve brain performance? We've written elsewhere at LifeTwo about current research into brain training. There is debate over whether a daily crossword or Sudoku do any more than improve your ability to do ... crosswords and sudoku. Others hold that mental exercise improves all-important blood flow to the brain over the long term. We have never seen an argument that there is any harm being done -- "it certainly can't hurt, and it may help" seems to be the worst anyone can say.

A recent study comes down on the side of the positive benefits of brain training, showing that adults who engage in mentally challenging activities perform better at ordinary tasks such as looking up a number in a phone book -- and this effect can last for years. The research, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, is said to be "the first large-scale, randomized controlled study of cognitive training in healthy older adults." It shows that visual search and identification training -- ten 90 minute sessions over a six week period -- markedly improved the subject's speed of processing.

Does that mean twenty minutes a day with Brain Age will pay long term benefits? It's doubtful, since most research says one key to brain health is variety and constant challenge. Solving basic-level Sudoku puzzles without breaking a mental sweat is the equivalent of walking to the mailbox -- nice, but not much help.

A Niche Product No More

Brain Age won't be the last of these brain exercise products. The Time article says 600,000 copies of Brain Age have been sold in the eight months it's been available in the US (it was first a huge hit in Japan). Nintendo also sells Big Brain Academy, which has fifteen more puzzles and may overcome some of the limitations of Brain Age.

Should you be the 600,001st person to buy Brain Age? My recommendation is no. It's not compelling over the long term. If you already have a Nintendo DS, invest in a game like Mario Bros. -- there's a challenge that will keep you occupied for weeks.

---
* The DS platform has a few sports games (with amazing graphics considering the small size and ~$130 cost) but most titles can be played by elementary age children (although they can be a blast for adults too). Nintendo doesn't allow violent games like those on the Sony PSP or the larger console systems.