Brain Boxes: Unleashing the Power of Emotional Intelligence & Success

In recent years brain-training computer games have become enormously popular, mainly due to being associated with staving off degenerative cognitive conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and improving IQ. While the most popular game, Nintendo’s Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training, has achieved worldwide sales of almost 15 million, other games, such as Wii’s Big Brain Academy and Playstation’s Brain Challenge, are also very successful. However, the jury is still out on whether these games improve your mental capabilities.

Many commercial entertainment-based brain-training games are derived from standard clinical tests that have been used by psychologists to assess the effects of brain damage. Checking verbal ability, numerical ability, and attention, it has been argued that they can improve your mental faculties by lowering your ‘brain age’ and ‘training’ your brain to be more intelligent.

A Medical Expert’s View on the Effectiveness of Brain-Training Computer Games

Dr. Chris Bird of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London doesn’t believe that these games are any more beneficial for increasing IQ than other forms of puzzles. “You’re basically doing some tasks again and again, and by repeating such tasks, you get better at them. In that sense, they’re not really different from any other kind of computer-based tasks that you might play. Just doing a crossword or Sudoku every day is not going to be massively beneficial to your health either, although you might enjoy doing it.”

Bird also dismisses the idea of improving your brain’s age: “The concept of giving you a brain age is really just giving you feedback on how you’re doing – it’s giving you a score, just like a lot of computer games. Brain-training games are no different from any other computer game.”

In fact, more traditional-style computer games such as the Grand Theft Auto or Halo series might actually be better for improving cognitive function. “Many clinical psychologists are beginning to use virtual reality to make their tests more ecologically valid and more relevant to people’s day-to-day lives, so they’re actually getting away from the kinds of tasks you find in brain-training games,” says Bird.

“You might find a first-person, shoot-’em-up game more exciting than brain training. It’s one of the few types of computer games where there’s quite a lot of evidence to show that you naturally get transferred to different abilities; for example, your spatial attention is improved. You’re putting yourself in quite a realistic, complex virtual-reality environment where you have to remember where things are, second-guess what other people are going to do, and respond very quickly. By getting better at a shoot-’em-up game, it is inevitable that you will also improve these abilities, whereas there is no evidence that brain-training devices would have this effect. Games are doing it in a very second-hand way, making it fun.”

Unlocking Intellectual Potential: The Impact of Brain-Training Games on Cognitive Enhancement

Dr. David Delany, the co-founder of Neurosynergy Games, says that while the popular brain-training games have entertainment value, they are limited in what they can achieve intellectually. “There are a couple of key dimensions that should be looked at when you’re evaluating these sorts of games. One is the specific efficacy of the game, ie for every hour played, what is the magnitude of the gain in ability? The second key factor is the level of generalisation, or learning transfer, achieved. Are there ability gains beyond the specifically trained task? Unfortunately, becoming an ace at speed arithmetic isn’t going to generalise to very much else.”

Psychologists Weigh In: The Real Benefits of Brain-Training Games Explored

While these criticisms apply to more commercial brain-training games, psychologists are finding that specifically targeted games are having a more beneficial effect. A collaborative study between the University of Michigan and the University of Bern, headed by Dr. Susanne Jaeggi and published last year, found that when participants followed a specifically designed brain-training game, they significantly improved their ‘fluid intelligence’, which is associated with general problem-solving and IQ.

Delany also believes in the possibilities of scientifically designed brain-training games. He recently founded Neurosynergy Games with his partner, psychologist Dr. Lorraine Boran. With a background in computational neuroscience, he has designed a new form of the brain-training game, which is uniquely intended to optimise both cognitive and emotional functioning. The provisionally titled ‘IQ-EQ Trainer’ (EQ is short for emotional-intelligence quotient) game is currently in development in conjunction with students from Carlow Institute of Technology. Already a success story, the IQ-EQ game is through to the Irish finals of Microsoft’s Imagine Cup 2009.

“The EQ trainer component is designed to decondition negative associations. For example, if you have a fear of spiders, the game will allow you to break your automatic negative associations with spiders rapidly. Regardless of the type of emotional psychopathology, whether it’s a serious fear of spiders or a debilitating social anxiety, there’s a shared underlying principle that links these disorders: attentional bias. This refers to the extent to which your attention is ‘captured’ by emotionally loaded cues. A common example is the unpleasant phenomenon of ‘stage fright’, where we end up unable to focus on anything but the prospect of spectacular public humiliation.

“What the EQ training exercises try to do is to repeatedly break the unhelpful automatic implicit associations using disorder-specific stimuli, thereby reducing the attentional bias. Researchers have already successfully used this approach to, for instance, improve self-esteem and reverse racial prejudice.”

Delany explains that while the more popular brain-training games test our basic skills, more complex brain training can lead to fundamental changes in intelligence.

“If you imagine a tree-like hierarchy of brain processes, on the outer branches you’ve got specific skills like arithmetic, but towards the centre are more fundamental brain capacities, known as executive-function processes. ‘Executive function’ is a neurocognitive umbrella term encompassing high-level functions such as planning, working memory, impulse control, inhibition, and mental flexibility.

“Clinically, deficits in executive functioning are central to a wide range of mental disorders, including schizophrenia, depression, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. In healthy individuals, differences in fluid intelligence are primarily due to differences in the efficiency of the executive system.

“Recent research has shown that targeted executive function training can have dramatic positive knock-on effects on a wide range of cognitive abilities – including performance on IQ tests. Our IQ trainer intensively targets multiple aspects of executive functioning simultaneously. Since prior deficits in executive functioning predict susceptibility to emotional psychopathology, the combined IQ-EQ game is designed to address both the specific symptoms and the root causes of a wide range of mental illnesses.”

While this is very positive news for brain training in the near future, most people are hoping that playing the games that are commercially available at the moment will prevent them from developing conditions such as dementia and Alzheimer’s in later life. However, Bird doesn’t promise anything yet.

“You can’t make a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s unless someone is performing poorly on tests of things like memory and concentration, so if you practice tests of memory and concentration a lot (i.e., by doing brain training), then you might well put off a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. However, it doesn’t mean that you are stopping the progress of the disease itself. Having said that, there may be a knock-on effect – that you’re able to cope better in your daily life with the disease,” he says.

“It’s not scientifically proven yet that there’s any real causal link between just doing puzzles and staving off Alzheimer’s disease, but there is evidence going in that direction. It will probably turn out that keeping your mind active and engaging in interesting, intellectual things will stand you in good stead against the effects of ageing.”

Originally Published: May 12, 2009