Tendo City

Pardon me if I show a little skepticism over this "wonder tool". Ryuta Kawashima, that's a guy I'll be looking into to see if he's actually being objective or is just calling himself a scientist.

Yes, absolutely, but I mean it in a marketing sense -- I don't know how much Nintendo truly cares about if it actually works for that if it's entertaining and people buy it...

Then Nintendo would be willing to scam people just to make some money? Sure you can label it "an entertainment product", just like psychic hotlines try to get away with, but that's just not going to fly. The way it's marketted it is clear they aren't "making an obvious joke" and this is really intended as being seen as a way to increase brain power. If this product is bunk, and Nintendo sells it fully aware there's no evidence supporting their claims, Nintendo is going to lose a lot of credibility...

Well, it seems this guy has done a lot of legitimate work, including a study which seems to indicate that people doing single digit addition use more brain power than someone playing a video game (a sobering conclusion). I'm still looking up stuff on this guy. He is without a Wikipedia entry, so it's good old fasioned google right now.

It's not completely a scam, as as you say there is some real research behind it, but I also think that there's not evidence that it actually helps.

If there's no evidence it helps, then it's a scam.

However, there may just be some evidence it helps. I'm still looking into this.

I've heard about doctors advising alzheimer's patients to do things that exercise their brains to slow down the degenerative process. I have no idea how well it works or if it does at all, but it's certainly won't hurt you to do it anyway.

It will hurt you to waste your time on a treatment that doesn't help.

However, I too have read up on research showing that to be the case. If these particular excersizes are those same scientifically verified ones, then I do believe I've reached a conclusion on this. This very well may be a helpful product.

I think that the evidence that it helps is stronger for people who truly are old -- like 70+ -- and I'm not sure if this game is really for them, so I'm not sure how much it can help, but it can't hurt, and the research does seem to show that there is some benefit to doing things like that... but yeah, I look at the claim that Brain Age will help in the way they claim dubiously.

That's a healthy attititude to have. I will only add that I don't like the attitude of "well, it couldn't hurt". Flapping my arms and clucking like a chicken couldn't hurt, but I'm not going to waste the effort on it even if it's the only thing I haven't tried to cure my brain cancer. Worse, wasting effort on a quack treatment just weakens one's ability to think critically, and also let's not forget the money spent on it. This has evidence in it's favor though. Also, from what I'm hearing, it's not really a game as such.

Playing Brain Training to keep your wits sharp is a bit different from acting like a chicken to cure brain cancer...

Quote:That's a healthy attititude to have. I will only add that I don't like the attitude of "well, it couldn't hurt". Flapping my arms and clucking like a chicken couldn't hurt, but I'm not going to waste the effort on it even if it's the only thing I haven't tried to cure my brain cancer. Worse, wasting effort on a quack treatment just weakens one's ability to think critically, and also let's not forget the money spent on it. This has evidence in it's favor though. Also, from what I'm hearing, it's not really a game as such.

Yeah, I thought of that, and agree for the most part... the question really is how strong the evidence in favor of this stuff is.