Synergistic Brain-Training

Plus: what 30 days of no caffeine does!

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The 10almonds Team
February 12, 2024

Today’s almonds have been activated by:

Getting your daily 10,000 steps in? If not, worry not, the health benefits tail off after about 7,500 steps per day.

⏰ IN A RUSH?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

  • Brain-training gets a lot of mixed publicity, and even in scientific literature, mixed reviews (we share examples of both in today’s main feature).

    • However, this is simply because it is highly dependent on what’s actually being done, with (for example) multiplayer online turn-based games outperforming made-for-purpose brain-training apps.

    • For the best benefits of all though, any such cognitive training should be done close in time to physical exercise

  • Omega-3 fatty acids have a lot of health benefits—including for joints and for the brain—but not all sources are created equal

    • Today's sponsor, NativePath, are offering a convenient, sustainable, and highly bioavailable form—far better than cod liver oil!

Read on to learn more about these things, or click here to visit our archive

🤫 A WORD TO THE WISE

Contagious Alzheimer’s?

Alzheimer’s may have once spread from person to person, but the risk of that happening today is incredibly low

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

What 30 Days Of No Caffeine Does (15:37)

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Want to watch it, but not right now? Bookmark it for later 🔖

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🧠 MAIN FEATURE

Let The Games Begin (But It Matters What Kind)

Exercise is good for brain health; we’ve written about this before, for example:

How To Reduce Your Alzheimer’s Risk ← there are many advices here, but exercise, especially cardiovascular exercise in this case, is an important item on the list!

Today it’s Psychology Sunday though, and we’re going to talk about looking after brain health by means of brain-training, via games.

“Brain-training” gets a lot of hype and flak:

  • Hype: do sudoku every day and soon you will have an IQ of 200 and still have a sharp wit at the age of 120

  • Flak: brain-training is usually training only one kind of cognitive function, with limited transferability to the rest of life

The reality is somewhere between the two. Brain training really does improve not just outwardly measurable cognitive function, but also internally measurable improvements visible on brain scans, for example:

But what about the transferability?

Let us play

This is where game-based brain-training comes in. And, the more complex the game, the better the benefits, because there is more chance of applicability to life, e.g:

  • Sudoku: very limited applicability

  • Crosswords: language faculties

  • Chess: spatial reasoning, critical path analysis, planning, memory, focus (also unlike the previous two, chess tends to be social for most people, and also involve a lot of reading, if one is keen)

  • Computer games: wildly varied depending on the game. While an arcade-style “shoot-em-up” may do little for the brain, there is a lot of potential for a lot of much more relevant brain-training in other kinds of games: it could be planning, problem-solving, social dynamics, economics, things that mirror the day-to-day challenges of running a household, even, or a business.

    • It’s not that the skills are useful, by the way. Playing “Stardew Valley” will not qualify you to run a real farm, nor will playing “Civilization” qualify you to run a country. But the brain functions used and trained? Those are important.

It becomes easily explicable, then, why these two research reviews with very similar titles got very different results:

The first review found that game-based brain-training had negligible actual use. The “games” they looked at? BrainGymmer, BrainHQ, CogMed, CogniFit, Dakim, Lumosity, and MyBrainTrainer. In other words, made-for-purpose brain-trainers, not actual computer games per se.

The second review found that game-based training was very beneficial. The games they looked at? They didn’t name them, but based on the descriptions, they were actual multiplayer online turn-based computer games, not made-for-purpose brain-trainers.

To summarize the above in few words: multiplayer online turn-based computer games outperform made-for-purpose brain-trainers for cognitive improvement.

Bringing synergy

However, before you order that expensive gaming-chair for marathon gaming sessions (research suggests a tail-off in usefulness after about an hour of continuous gaming per session, by the way), be aware that cognitive training and (physical) exercise training combined, performed close in time to each other or simultaneously, perform better than the sum of either alone:

See also:

❝Simultaneous training was the most efficacious approach for cognition, followed by sequential combinations and cognitive training alone, and significantly better than physical exercise.

Our findings suggest that simultaneously and sequentially combined interventions are efficacious for promoting cognitive alongside physical health in older adults, and therefore should be preferred over implementation of single-domain training❞

Take care!

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📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

A Therapeutic Journey: Lessons From The School Of Life – by Alain de Botton

We’ve often featured The School of Life’s videos here on 10almonds, and most of those are written by (and often voiced by) Alain de Botton.

This book lays out the case for mental health being also just health, that no person is perfectly healthy all the time, and sometimes we all need a little help. While he does suggest seeking help from reliable outside sources, he also tells a lot about how we can improve things for ourselves along the way, whether by what we can control in our environment, or just what’s between our ears.

In the category of limitations, the book is written with the assumption that you are in a position to have access to a therapist of your choice, and in a sufficiently safe and stable life situation that there is a limit to how bad things can get.

The style is… Alain de Botton’s usual style. Well-written, clear, decisive, instructive, compassionate, insightful, thought-provoking.

Bottom line: this isn’t a book for absolutely everyone, but if your problems are moderate and your resources are comfortable, then this book has a lot of insights that can make your life more easy-going and joyful, without dropping the seriousness when appropriate.

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Wishing you a peaceful Sunday,

The 10almonds Team