“Brain training games won’t make you smarter – but a dose of blue light or an electrical shock just might
BREATHE in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. I crack open an eye. Everyone else has theirs closed. I shut it again. Breathe in, breathe out. Around me people are sitting crossed-legged, meditating. For some it’s spiritual, for others an oasis of calm. Me? I’m building a better brain.
A few months ago I would probably have bought a brain-training game, but alas, it turns out they are probably useless. Although your performance on the games improves, that effect doesn’t seem to translate into the real world (see “The rise and fall of brain training”). With that in mind, I wondered if there was anything else I could do to give my grey matter a boost.
Our brains are constantly adapting to information from the world around us. However, some activities make a bigger impression than others. In recent years, researchers have been probing how outside influences, from music to meditation, might change and enhance our brains.
One of the most promising is music – and not via the famous but controversial “Mozart effect”, whereby merely listening to classical music is supposed to improve brain performance. Learning to play an instrument brings about dramatic brain changes that not only improve musical skills but can also spill over into other cognitive abilities, including speech, language, memory, attention, IQ and even empathy. Should I dust off my trumpet and get practising?
Musical training, especially at a young age, seems to significantly alter the structure of your brain. For instance, after 15 months of piano lessons young children had more highly developed auditory and motor areas than their untrained peers. These brain areas are very active when you play an instrument ”
Read more at New Scientist (Thanks XxLadyClaireXx)
Spark! How exercise will improve the performance of your brain by John J. Ratey is a very good read. Not exactly a light read, but it got me on that treadmill and I do feel I’m thinking clearer. There seems to be a lot of negativity towards brain games, but if people like doing them then surely it’s better than doing nothing.
Interesting!
i guess this is why miss molly was always rockin in the house of blue lites!
@ Abeo,
Ever thought about how it would look like if we all had a head or brain size like Tweety bird to the proportion of our bodies and how hard it is to walk around with such head or brain ?
Things must be made less complicated is the answer instead of an overreactive brain that knows everything. Stimulus does not mean advance in ability or skill. Just look around what “stimulus” has done. As far as I can observe, it made more of a mess with all the rules and regulations in place than any SIMPLE solution for the problem in the first place. It still is 1+1 = 2 thisis what the general people understand and can work with not 2^*200+100/3(2-3) = infinity.
Do you know there is still life without gadgets, trumpets, music, computers, etc. etc. We just keep telling ourselves that there isn’t
Good thing I’m learning piano then,
My brain is going to be awesome! Lol!
KJ’s response made me sad. So, the ‘general people’ understand 1+1=2. What an ignorant and assumptive way to make a point. I don’t have a mathematical brain, and am not interested in being an egg head. Knowledge and understanding of, and deriving pleasure from, music, either your own or made by someone else, can only contribute to emotional intelligence and sensitivity, surely. It is a joy in life and I fail to understand how an argument about making things less complicated is relevant to this. In the same way that some people love kicking a football around on a Saturday morning, people who wouldn’t dream of buying a card and spend hours creating their own handmade ones, or those that knit amazing knitted things, it is an enrichment of life and personality.
@ Angie,
I have no problem with the things you mentioned except one and I quote ” Knowledge and understanding of, and deriving pleasure from, music, either your own or made by someone else, can only contribute to emotional intelligence and sensitivity, surely.” Are you referring to the nowadays crappy music that many a group is making and have absolutely no skill to play an instrument virtuously like as in the times of Bach, Mozart, Brahms, and even to mention E. L.O., Supertramp, Santana, The Commodores, Pink Floyd, Emmerson Lake, etc. The Music of today is a torment to someone’s mind and ears. Repetitive dull choruses and a lot of stamping and banging on the brain. Hardly, making one’s brain better or intelligent. I think rather mindnumbing and ruining any understanding of true Music.
‘@ KJ’ – im not 100% what this means, however it seems quite a convention when writing large chunks of delirious crap! please see above for example…
From your message i can only assume you are a lover of both classical music and the music that is today labelled vintage. I once bought a Bach record and it came with a free high horse, similar to the one you rode in on in fact- True story.
Of course, as a classical music lover your knowledge and understanding of both music and the effects auditory stimulation has on the brain are far superior to mine (or that of anyone with a degree in brainery… Probably). so i am clutching at straws when i break to you the news that Bach and Santana are not ‘in the times’ or even close to the same time.
…Furthermore i obviously overlooked the fact that it was the artisit/musicians skill to which the article attributed to these positive effects.
I may have been inclined to agree with your well presented and allround well reasened argument, however it did just occur to me that it may be the process of liking the said music which causes the postulated results. It then occured to me, what of being of sound and independant mind (oh for the sorrows of dostoyevsky) that enjoying music is rather subjective. The headache i get from listening loud distorted music with booming bass quite effectively drowns out the little voices in my head which were caused from reading such garbled nonsense. This is in fact not true, however since you were conforming so nicely to your stereotype of an…
…older generation then i felt compelled to conform to that of the 18 year old i am.
Even better if it turns out you are, ‘not in fact old yet a young person who loves REAL music’ because if i read one more account of someone young believing they are the only person under 45 to enjoy other types of music than that of todays artists.
Or perhaps that last statement is my way of saying, old or young, classical or contemporary, after reading your comment i can tell you- Ain’t no music that can help you..
@ Leigh,
Your reply implies to me that my validation of an observation would in your investigation of the matter as being wasted. If you have problems with voices in your head, it would be good that you should try to get rid of them in another way than playing overly loud music to ban them. Most things are changed by a whisper if one carefully would listen to it’s instructions and not by bombastic mind-numbing sounds.
Also my scale of musical interest is far greater that the list of people and groups that I mentioned. Unfortunately this blog does not give me much more characters to dispense on the internet than if I would create more blog posts as you do. “Real music” is irrelevant. Skill however is something that I can as a person appreciate. Whether doing that myself or observing it.
@ Leigh,
Insulting one in trying to usurp yourself into a higher position is basically flattery for me to observe from your point of view. I have no problems with your points of view or anyone elses, but see a trend that is usually happening online or in open discussions how to cave someone else’s head in by thinking that whenever I write something or say something it must be so that I can floor someone and make them “paralyzed” in responding back. This is the moment In where the opponent triumphantly wants to walk way with a huge medal given by the observing public and by themselves. Not realizing that actually nothing meaningful was said and to the benefit of the discussion in progress.
My opinion of your today’s “artists” are not very high. I see little skill, though I see a lot of $$
@ Leigh
in their eyes, which mostly results in stupid, arrogant, mental and erratic behaviour that no-one benefits from than themselves. Not even to mention those that follow them with great awe and are infatuated with them. I believe the world would be a much better place if such “artists” would lay down their rubbish music and do something more useful in society instead of spreading their canker in peoples brains, what so clearly is evident when you start to look around you carefully. This might sound harsh, but reality usually bites hard.