Researchers at Wake Forest University studied whether just four days of training (at just 20 minutes a day) could make a difference in participants’ mood, energy, and cognition. Undergraduate students (average age 22 years) either participated in the meditation sessions or spent a similar amount of time sitting quietly and listening to an audio book.

Participants in the meditation condition showed decreases in anxiety and improvements in several mental processing tasks compared to those in the audio book group. The meditators’ performance on one aspect of a working memory task (how many answers they got correct in a row) suggested that they may have improved their attention.

This is a small and very preliminary study that extends others’ work on meditation and the brain.It shows that even brief meditation practice can make a difference. you don’t have to be a Buddhist monk to learn to still your mind and pay better attention. Paying attention may be one of the most important things you can do to improve your brain’s functioning.

Reference:

Zeidan F et al.(in press) Mindfulness meditation improves cognition: Evidence of brief mental training. Consciousness and Cognition, doi:10.1016/j.concog.2010.03.014

The study, reported in the journal Nature, highlights the problem called generalization. Most studies of computer-based brain training have shown, for example, that people can readily learn to do better on the tasks on which they train, People who work on learning how to remember a list of words will usually get better at it. If you train at solving mazes, you will probably get better at solving a maze puzzle.

What’s not clear, though, is that the training you do will help you on other things. You can learn a list of words and that may help you memorize a grocery list, but all that work probably won’t help you remember where you put your keys, or help you do better on a test for your job. In the same way, you may get pretty good at solving a maze, but it not likely that will help you be a better driver.

In the study reported in Nature, viewers of a popular BBC television show names “Bang Goes the Theory” participated in six weeks of online brain training. Participants completed baseline measure of reasoning, working memory, and paired associates learning and were randomly assigned to different training groups. Participants were aged 18 to 60 years, and 11,430 completed enough of the training to contribute data.

What did the study show? Consistent with a great deal of other research, the study showed that people who trained got better on the tasks they trained on, but there was essentially no evidence that they got better on the baseline tasks. The authors of the study give an illustration: people in the memory training group improved in their ability to remember numbers by about 3/100 (three hundredths) of a digit. They suggest that it would take almost four years of training to remember just one extra digit. Further, the control group in the study got better by 2/100 (two hundredths), and they didn’t even get memory training.

There are a number of legitimate criticisms of the study.Researchers could argue about the selection of tests, how participants were trained, and the small amount of training completed by some of the participants. Including a large age range may have masked improvements in some groups, such as older adults.

As always, more research is needed. But this study shows that at least short-term computer-based brain training may not make a big difference in daily life.

Reference:

Owen AM et al. Putting brain training to the test. Nature near-final version, 20 April 2010 (doi:10.1038/nature09042). Click here to go to the report.

In giving talks to community groups about brain fitness, I emphasize that a number of elements go in to brain fitness. And one of these key elements has nothing to do with high-tech computer training. For optimal brain fitness, a sense of purpose is crucial. You have to have a reason for getting out of bed in the morning.

The evidence for my proposition is there, if you look for it. Dan Buettner, in his book Blue Zones, shows that purpose and social engagement are present in areas of the world where people routinely live into their 80s, 90s, and 100s. Other studies have shown that people who have a sense of purpose in life are less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease.

Several recent studies support the view of sense of purpose may be an important factor in maintaining physical and psychological well being. A study reported in The Gerontologist shows that people involved in volunteer activities during midlife had better mood and physical health 20 years later.

Another study explicitly investigated purpose in life. The study reported in the Archives of General Psychiatry showed that people who reported a greater sense of purpose in life had reduced risks for developing Alzheimer’s disease and mild cognitive impairment.

References:

Pillemer K, et al. (2010). Environmental volunteering and health outcomes over a 20-year period. The Gerontologist, published on line February 19, 2010. Click here.

Boyle PA et al. (2010). Effect of a purpose in life on risk of incident Alzheimer disease and mild cognitive impairment in community-dwelling older persons. Archives of General Psychiatry, 67, 304-310.

Brain fitness may help you avoid the risk of being bored, and that’s almost undoubtedly a good thing. In an ongoing study in the UK, researchers found that those who reported the most boredom when they were evaluated in the late 1980s were two and a half times more likely to die by 2009.

But it’s not clear exactly why boredom might increase someone’s risk of death. The authors of the study in the International Journal of Epidemiology suggest that a report of boredom probably represents some other problem. Bored people may be depressed or anxious, for example, factors that have already been related to disease risk in a number of studies. They may be more likely to drink excessively or smoke and less likely to exercise, all factors that might increase risk for cardiovascular disease.

An important part of any brain fitness program is staying actively engaged with friends and the community. Other studies have shown, for example, that having friends or being involved in a volunteer program can reduce the risk of cognitive decline. This finding underlines the fact that your thoughts, feeling, and behavior can have significant effects on your health.

Reference:

Britton A, Shipley MJ. Bored to death? International Journal of Epidemiology, available online February 1, 2010.

Available online (free) at the journal website.

Self-training vs. training with a coach has advantages and disadvantages. The advantages of having a trainer are fairly clear: he or she can help you spot your weaknesses and strengths and develop a program to develop areas you need to work on. Disadvantages are that first you have to find a good trainer and usually you have to pay them for individualized coaching.Another disadvantage may be that a trainer, or a personalized training program, may be hard to find in your area. Although brain fitness programs are being developed in many areas of the country, most people don’t have easy access.

Online training programs can help to address the shortage. Programs like Lumosity, Dakim, CogniFit, and Posit all provide users with somewhat individualized computer-based training programs.Some programs do a better job of evaluating your strengths and weaknesses before you start training (for example, CogniFit does several sessions of testing before you start training), and all of them tailor the difficulty to training to your needs.

What should you look for in a brain fitness trainer, even if you can find one? I’d argue that you need someone with a strong background in cognitive evaluations, such as a clinical neuropsychologist. He or she may be helpful in helping you find out what your strengths and weaknesses are, how they relate to your everyday life, and what kind of training may be helpful.

Training philosophy may be important as well. If you believe that brain fitness requires more than computer-based training and includes things like aerobic exercise, strength training, stress management, and diet, you may need to find someone with a broad background. Many personal fitness trainers may know about some of these other elements.

A brain fitness trainer should be able to help you with all the elements of brain fitness. Even if he or she isn’t knowledgeable about all of them, your program should include all of them. For true brain fitness training, you may need help from several trainers.