
No gain from brain training - robg
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100420/full/4641111a.html
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sayemm
As a counter to this, Dominic O'Brien, the world's memory champion, is a
terrific example of how far mental training could take you:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_O%27Brien>

He started training his memory at the age of 30 and is also dyslexic. Good
youtube interview too: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N60_d8vvl9I>

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ceejayoz
Mental training, or innate ability?

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sayemm
Mental training, highly recommend his book: "How to Develop a Perfect Memory"
- I practice his system and it works

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gtani
Hmm, I'll have to dig out the Oreilly Brain Hacks, see what was there

<http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596101534/>

<http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596007799/>

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sayemm
I've read "Mind Performance Hacks" - it's a cool book. The author put up a
great wiki on this stuff too: <http://www.ludism.org/mentat>

Though I went right ahead to Dominic O'Brien's stuff first - he's the world's
best. Like any skill though, it's tedious to get the system down first, but
once you do, it's a life skill that gets better w/ practice.

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Groxx
It does seem that brain training doesn't _directly_ improve anything but what
was trained for.

I buy that. Taken from a more computational standpoint, that'd be the holy
grail: we'd have to be nigh perfectly abstracted to allow improvement in any
one area to improve another area. We're generalists, but we're not _that_ good
of generalists.

Training _does_ encourage you to learn ways to learn what you're being trained
on, and those ways of learning things may very well translate to learning
other things. Direct cause-effect? No, thus no _guarantee_ , which is what
science wants very much. But I'd argue some gain is indeed, uh, gained.

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DennisP
They don't mention specifically whether they tested dual n-back, which as far
as I know is the only task that some studies have shown to increase fluid
intelligence.

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robg
That's a very difficult task. Can you point to those studies?

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drats
Small sample, improvement mostly in the people who were scoring worst to begin
with if I recall correctly. <http://www.iapsych.com/articles/jaeggi2008.pdf>
Jaeggi et al also have a 2010 paper extending/replicating the results.

More interesting to me is that after reading a popular article about an
increase in lucid dreaming since the 1980s I thought there would be a
connection to gaming. Turns out there are a few academic papers exploring
this. This is important to the type of culture technology engenders and the
type of internal actors or agents we are at the core, passive or active. I
think computer games rather than TV or flim, the active hyperlink rather than
the "take our word for it" print hold promise in the sense of making us better
at being individuals. Attention-seeking bleating about the lowering of
attention spans in recent decades doesn't take into account that there is
something to be said for brevity; and that there are far too many system-
building waffling patriarchal walruses "performing" their alpha-male genius
through turgid prose (especially in philosophy and related disciplines).

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danielford
I'm desperately trying to think of any human activity that would substantially
improve after ten minutes of practice, three times a week, for six weeks. My
general inclination is to agree with their hypothesis, but testing it like
this is just embarrassing.

~~~
robg
Try doing sit-ups or push-ups that much and that often. I'm pretty sure you'll
improve over six weeks.

That said, more works needs to be done.

~~~
YooLi
Agreed, but you would only improve at sit-ups or push-ups, and there is a
point where you will plateau. Doing push-ups 3 times a week for 10 min. won't
make you good at pull-ups, which it seems is what people are expecting with
these brain 'training' games. If you want to improve your mind, you do have to
work it, but the work needs to be varied and consistent: work on your memory,
read, learn to play a musical instrument, learn new physical skills, do math
problems, etc. You have to do it all and keep doing it (unless you want to
specialize, in which case you do one thing over and over as has already been
said in the comments).

~~~
robg
Couldn't agree more. But then that's the problem with the concept of fluid
intelligence.

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checoivan
Would be good to see how longer training for a way more extended period of
time works out.

Still, I wasn't expecting an IQ bump from playing a lot of Brain Age on the
DS, but I bet many people did.

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pella
<http://groups.google.com/group/brain-training?hl=en>

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mattmanser
The volunteers were self-selected so probably already did this sort of thing
online, the exposure extremely short and the testees from a broad age range
who are not the intended audience for these type of games.

All outlined in the article, but I restate it as it's a travesty that
attention grabbing 'research' like this still gets published and worse still
reported on.

~~~
robg
All volunteers are self-selected.

Nature is the right venue. It will spur much more research which is the only
way to evaluate the science.

~~~
mattmanser
Admittedly I wasn't clear there about the volunteers, these are people who
volunteered via a BBC programme called 'Bang goes the theory' and I suspect
probably also recruited via the BBC's website.

They do not represent a broad demographic, they are extremely biased. They are
not, and never will be, a good group to base any sort of scientific test on.
It violates the scientific method and these 'results' should never have been
published in any serious form. To be frank it is medieval quackery.

Owen should go read some Karl Popper and bow his head in shame for even trying
to draw any conclusions from results obtained by recruiting test subjects from
a tv programme.

I'm not saying that he's wrong, he may be totally right. But his test was
inherently flawed, yet he presents his results to Nature? He should never have
written to Nature and his 'test' is as scientifically significant as 'Ask HN:
Which browser do you use?'.

It happens all the time, but it's really beginning to piss me off.

~~~
robg
Yup, college undergrads are the perfect research subjects - easily available
and inexpensive.

That said, wouldn't Popper care more about replication and falsification then
with sample design?

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jessriedel
Nature News certainly seems to do a better job of summarizing the research and
important caveats. I'm looking over the website, but I'm having trouble
telling what they focus on. Do they mostly just give a layman's version of
Nature articles?

