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Filed under Thoughts on July 9, 2007 by Joel Nagy

Brain Games

Video games have been touted as enhancing hand-eye coordination as well as providing skills that lead to better surgeons and soldiers.  But what about brain development, mental acuity and memory.  Look at how "Wii Sports" and previously "Dance Dance Revolution" have made people more active.  Retirement homes have now begun introducing the Wii to senior citizens as a way to get them moving and having fun, and schools are also bringing DDR to the gym to help fight childhood obesity.

Nintendo previously brought out "Brain Age" and "Big Brain Academy" for the DS, and just recently released BBA for the Wii as well, to help improve our mental muscles.  I got my hands on Big Brain Academy and have been playing it for the last three weeks improving my score and brain power every day.  To start with, the game is a great way to see how our brains work, as well as the brains of our friends.   The game has five areas to test your mental mettle.  My own brain leans heavily towards compute with memorize being my lowest scoring area.  After the last three weeks though I have noticed my scores in the memorization games improving, which is very good considering that as a programmer I find myself not recalling function parameters all the time and needing to rely on the Internet more often with every new language I learn.  Hopefully this will serve to replace adding Ginkgo Boloba to my diet which I never remember to even buy.

There have been numerous studies lately that suggest that video games can actually make us better workers when it comes to multitasking, problem solving and even teamwork.  Harvard Business School Press released a book last November, The Kids Are Alright: How the Gamer Generation Is Changing the Workplace, that touches exactly on these points and tells us that the old myths of video games were so far from right that your parents should've made sure you played them more often (now I might be taking that a little too far,) but the point is that these games can help us become more productive and even more social.

And now they are even helping us become smarter.  Big Brain Academy offers enough challenge and fun to make it something you'll want to play every day.  I try to put in at least 20 minutes whenever I can.  Along with improving your own brain, the team or versus modes also make this a great party game, certainly something the Wii was designed for.

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