Can games really strengthen your brain?

Short answer: Yes.

Brain game lovers may be interested to know, that a recent study by the “Center for Brain Health” at the University of Texas revealed that “strategy-based” cognitive training could deliver real-life benefits including cognition and better mental health.

Not much time required

Perhaps even more interesting about this study was the relatively short duration of the brain gaming required to deliver measurable results. In the Center for Brain Health study, subjects were trained during 8 to 12 sessions over just 1 to 2 months. Not enough for results? Wrong. The results were real and measurable according to Dr. Sandra Chapman the founder and chief-director of the Center.

From the official release:

“Cognitive gains were documented in trained areas such as abstracting, reasoning, and innovating. Benefits also spilled over to untrained areas such as memory for facts, planning, and problem solving. What’s exciting about this work is that in randomized trials comparing gist reasoning training to memory training, we found that it was not learning new information that engaged widespread brain networks and elevated cognitive performance, but rather actually deeper processing of information and using that information in new ways that augmented brain performance. Strengthening intellectual capacity is no longer science fiction; what used to seem improbable is now in the realm of reality.“

That sounds like a pretty good reason to keep playing games.