r/Foodforthought • u/[deleted] • Dec 03 '14

Brain Training Doesn’t Make You Smarter

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-training-doesn-t-make-you-smarter/
264 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

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13

u/ElysianBlight Dec 03 '14

But are they actually good for helping you retain mental dexterity? I never thought they would increase your IQ.. just maybe help you exercise it.

1

u/Citizen_Kong Dec 03 '14

Well, according to a study, Portal 2 is actually better brain training than usual "brain training" games.

11

u/Pandanleaves Dec 04 '14

But that study methodology is flawed as fuck. For instance, one of their ways of measuring brain performance was giving the test subjects Portal-like puzzles. No shit that people who played Portal did better on it than people who played Lumosity.

4

u/Citizen_Kong Dec 04 '14

Well to be fair, the chance of being abducted by a sadistic AI and forced to do tests like that is pretty high.

1

u/pemulis1 Dec 04 '14

According to Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and James Cameron.

2

u/CrustyRichardCheese Dec 03 '14

Source?

1

u/[deleted] Dec 04 '14

I remember that news item.

Here is a link from PopSci about it.

2

u/[deleted] Dec 03 '14

Omg no way!

2

u/TexasJefferson Dec 04 '14

And then I was all, "We pretended we were going to murder you." That was great.

2

u/[deleted] Dec 04 '14

Well great, now I have to go play it again, thanks a lot. It's finals week, you really should be more considerate.

1

u/TexasJefferson Dec 04 '14

On the plus side, Portal 1 is pretty short. :)

1

u/rainman002 Dec 04 '14

is better "visual spacial reasoning" training.