Are you interested in trying out this brain training stuff? If so, there is a really cool new training program by the BBC. It's super easy and completely free, just sign up and start. You take a few quick benchmarking tests to start and then you can begin training. They ask that you train three times a week for six months if you want your data to be included in the analysis. It may seem like a long time but the games are pretty entertaining and it really isn't too much of a time drain at around 10 minutes a clip.
The website claims that it's going for the biggest trial ever completed, so the results should be super interesting. If you sign up now your data probably won't be included in the six month analysis that will be broadcast sometime this spring (hopefully soon). However, they are going to do another analysis that will be in published papers later in 2011.
The goal of the experiment is to see if brain training really works. There is a lot of controversy in the literature at the moment and hopefully this experiment can help clean some of it up. This is the basic idea behind it. First, you complete a series of tasks to get a measure of different mental attributes. After that you will train on a variety of different tasks that you will (hopefully) improve at as you practice. Finally, after six months you will complete a new set of tasks. This new set of tasks will be measuring the same mental attributes as the first benchmark tested but in a different way. This is to ensure you just didn't get better at playing any specific game. With all this data they will run some fancy statistics on it and see if the training tasks significantly improved a significant amount of people's benchmark score.
The statistics will be interesting to see because of the internet based platform the experiment is run off. Running the experiment through a website allows lots of people to participate, but it also allows lots of other variables to factor in. At what time and place was the training completed, after a hard day at work or sitting on the beach? Was the same person taking the test and training? Was the person cheating at the test or benchmarking tasks?
At any rate I highly recommend everybody sign up and give it a try. Unless you are already in a study of some sort then please don't, as you will be getting different kinds and amounts of training than you should be. The video below is an excerpt from the show that is working with scientists to make this thing happen.
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