Mask Yourself

Let's promote life-and-economy-saving mask wearing, not discourage it

Many news outlets used to provide incorrect information about the benefits of masks in stopping COVID-19. People were discouraged from mask wearing, mostly in order to conserve the masks for medical workers. However, in the second part of March the publicly available information on this topic has changed drastically.... Go to full article

Super Magic Star

Numbers 1 to 12 can be placed in 12! different ways in a hexagram (Star of David), which is equal to 479 001 600. The arrangement of numbers in the hexagram that I devised is linked to Hebrew letters, gematria, and Kabbalah. It is infused with symmetry, which, according to the great Henri Poincaré, lies at the heart of matter and the universe.... Go to full article

Playing Analog Games Is Associated With Reduced Declines in Cognitive Function: A 68-Year Longitudinal Cohort Study

Playing analog games may be associated with better cognitive function but, to date, these studies have not had extensive longitudinal follow-up. Our goal was to examine the association between playing games and change in cognitive function from age 11 to age 70, and from age 70 to 79.... Go to full article

Can Computer Use, Crafts and Games Slow or Prevent Age-related Memory Loss?

MINNEAPOLIS – A new study has found that mentally stimulating activities like using a computer, playing games, crafting and participating in social activities are linked to a lower risk or delay of age-related memory loss called mild cognitive impairment, and that the timing and number of these activities may also play a role. ... Go to full article

Can 'brain games' really help you improve the way your brain functions?

You've probably seen ads for apps promising to make you smarter in just a few minutes a day. Hundreds of so-called "brain training" programs can be purchased for download. These simple games are designed to challenge mental abilities, with the ultimate goal of improving the performance of important everyday tasks.... Go to full article

Is 'Gaming Disorder' An Illness? WHO Says Yes, Adding It To Its List Of Diseases

They are popular. They are controversial. And now, video games have just become an internationally recognized addiction.... Go to full article

The mobile game that can detect Alzheimer's risk

A specially designed mobile phone game can detect people at risk of Alzheimer's - according to new research from the University of East Anglia.

Researchers studied gaming data from an app called Sea Hero Quest, which has been downloaded and played by more than 4.3 million people worldwide.... Go to full article

Doing Puzzles Won't Stave Off Mental Decline

Scottish researchers have some good news and bad news for those who do crosswords, Suduko, and similar puzzles.... Go to full article

Gamers Have More Grey Matter And Better Brain Connectivity, Research Suggests

As someone who has clocked an unseemly amount of hours on an MMO, I'm no stranger to the guilt that can come from habitual gaming.

Nature, Intelligence, Chess

But the good news is there's mounting evidence that the hobby can have a range of beneficial effects on your brain, including improved cognitive control, emotional regulation, spatial resolution of vision, hand-eye motor coordination, and contrast sensitivity. ... Go to full article

Juraj Pechác used my Dancing Skulls to illustrate his lecture about programming in JavaScript.

Can science-based video games help kids with autism?

The Research on Autism and Development (RAD) Laboratory is located in a Tetris-like maze of brown wooden buildings, not far from the main campus of the University of California, San Diego. The lab itself is a nondescript warren of small beige rooms. But everything else about it is extraordinary.... Go to full article

D!NG, I Love You Too!

Thank you for featuring my second game Fill Stars !

Thank You D!NG!

Fit Circles got featured on DONG (Vsauce)! The video's 160K views generated so much traffic that Shapes Mania was temporarily overloaded, but now it is back online. Ah, the travails of fame...

Brain training for old dogs: Could touchscreen games become the Sudoku of man’s best friend?

Spoiling old dogs in their twilight years by retiring them to the sofa and forgiving them their stubbornness or disobedience, doesn’t do our four-legged friends any good. Regular brain training and lifelong learning create positive emotions and can slow down mental deterioration in old age.... Go to full article

Learning Video Games, Piano Both Bolster Brain in Seniors

Studies over the last decade have shown that video games can improve brain plasticity and the volume of gray matter in younger people.

Those brain benefits also extend to older gamers, and their memory performance, according to a new study.

Word Grabber

The learning of new skills like the world of Super Mario 64 – or playing the piano – encourages hippocampal memory use, and keeps the brain working, claims the paper in PLoS ONE.... Go to full article

How many words can you make out of the letters in "GAME"? A popular website WinEveryGame suggests 16 words: mega, mage, game, meg, mag, mae, gem, gam, gae, age, me, ma.

But in the new Word Grabber project by Frederik Schrader you can find 18 words! Two more words are added:

These words are included in Collins Scrabble Words list:means soul,is a synonym of enigma.

Collins Scrabble Words list is used in English-language Scrabble tournaments in most countries except the USA, Thailand and Canada.

Thus, it seems that Word-Grabber.com is a very interesting and useful resource to prepare for word games like Scrabble. Exploring the relationship between video game expertise and fluid intelligence

Hundreds of millions of people play intellectually-demanding video games every day. What does individual performance on these games tell us about cognition? Here, we describe two studies that examine the potential link between intelligence and performance in one of the most popular video games genres in the world (Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas: MOBAs). In the first study, we show that performance in the popular MOBA League of Legends’ correlates with fluid intelligence as measured under controlled laboratory conditions.... Go to full article

Do Games and Gamification really make you more intelligent?

The overall perception of most people still nowadays is that gaming, in general, is a negative activity. Many for some reason still feel that anything to do with games will lead to an unproductive life. And those who play games or interact with game-like environments must be lazy, probably did not do well academically, and most likely apathetic and/or depressed with their lives.... Go to full article

Mind-body maximizes benefits of exercise to seniors

By 2035, a third of the Canadian population will be over 60 years old. And Kinesiology PhD student Narlon Boa Sorte Silva wants to make sure every one of them stays active and engaged in life via exercise.

Daily crosswords linked to sharper brain in later life

In a recent study, Boa Sorte Silva showed that mind-motor training – an activity that simultaneously engages both cognitive function and movement – used in association with regular exercise helped older adults stave off the effects of dementia more than just regular exercise alone.... Go to full article

Experts at the University of Exeter Medical School and Kings College London analysed data from more than 17,000 healthy people aged 50 and over, submitted in an online trial. In research presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (AAIC) 2017, the team asked participants how frequently they played word puzzles such as crosswords.

Think brain games make you smarter? Think again, FSU researchers say

The study, one of the largest of its kind, used tests from the CogTrackTM and PROTECT online cognitive test systems to assess core aspects of brain function. They found that the more regularly participants engaged with word puzzles, the better they performed on tasks assessing attention, reasoning and memory.... Go to full article

Be skeptical of ads declaring you can rev up your brain’s performance by challenging it with products from the growing brain-training industry.

Science does not support many of the claims.

Playing Tetris can reduce onset of PTSD after trauma, study shows

That’s according to a new study published in the science journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience from a team of Florida State University researchers.... Go to full article

After experiencing or witnessing a traumatic event, such as a car accident, people are likely to develop anxiety or distress in relation to that event soon after the experience, leading to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Brain Games Might Cut Alzheimer's Risk

But a new study has shown that playing the computer game Tetris within hours of experiencing trauma can prevent those feelings from taking over your mind.... Go to full article

A computerized brain training program cut the risk of dementia among healthy people by 48 percent, U.S. researchers said Sunday in reporting an analysis of the results of a 10-year study.

Lumosity to Pay $2M to Settle FTC Charges Over ‘Brain Training’ Ads

The preliminary findings, presented at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in Toronto, are the first to show that any kind of intervention could delay the development of dementia in normal, healthy adults.... Go to full article

The company that created the Lumosity “brain training” program has agreed to pay $2 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it deceived consumers into believing that its mind games could help users excel at work and school and reduce or delay “cognitive impairment associated with age and other serious health conditions.”... Go to full article

Study Shows Heavy Adolescent Pot Use Permanently Lowers IQ

Marijuana smokers have long been characterized as dimwitted and slow. They tend to shrug off these stereotypes as artifacts of how they are when they're on the drug. If you've ever had the misfortune of enduring a pot smoker who takes you through the “beneficial” effects of marijuana on the brain, then you've likely wondered if the stereotype is true.... Go to full article

Bejeweled Proposed As A Clinical Treatment For Depression And Anxiety

While more mainstream video games are under fire for causing depression, a new study at East Carolina University finds that playing casual puzzle games is an effective way to combat clinical depression and anxiety. Guess who underwrote the study?... Go to full article