Summary of the Article: The Brain Trainers
I his article, Dan Hurley throws some light on the debate surrounding the effectiveness of cognitive training in increasing intelligence. The article turns around of a quite narrow definition of intelligence,” the ability to analyze and mentally manipulate concepts, images, sounds and instructions.” Among the cognitive training company consulted in the article, LearningRx is the only company which asserts to succeed in helping their clients to increase their IQ and they even present data on the increase of IQ score of 30 000 of its clients as a scientific evidence of their claims. The other companies, on the other hand, prefer to say that their programs increase cognitive abilities. However, most
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On the bright side of all this, cognitive abilities improvements after cognitive training were observed on patients with A.D.H.D. and cancer survivor patients who have their learning ability reduced by chemotherapy by scientists who define themselves as skeptical. In the case of A.D.H.D. patients, they not only improved their ability to stay on a task, but they also saw their scores on test of working memory, “the ability to not just hold [which can be defined as short-term memory (McColl, 2014)] but to juggle items in the mind despite brief distractions.” However, differently from the brain training owner’s they seem to agree again that better controlled studies still have to be made before anyone can arrive to any real scientific conclusions on whether cognitive training can really improve one’s intelligence or not. The articles cites examples of some clients of those companies who pay as in the LearningRx example, $12 000 for a one year program. The critics of cognitive training claim the these programs only make people better at taking tests and that more better controlled scientific studies must be made before one can affirm that this kind of training …show more content…
Dozens of women ages 70 to 80 with a mild cognitive impairment, which is a risk factor for the development of dementia, were selected for this study. In a previous study, the same group of researchers found that older women had had their associative memory improved after a period doing weight training. They then decided to continue their research observing how different types of exercise affect other type of memory. The two types of exercises performed this time were of the endurance and strength types, as a control group only did some stretching and tonus exercises. At the beginning and at the end of the test, the volunteer’s verbal and spatial memory were tested. The results showed that the women in the toning group scored less than what they did at the beginning of the study; the women who exercised saw an improvement in their spatial memory score, but women who did endurance exercises showed better results in their in their verbal memory than the women who did weight
The study required that participants must be given IQ tests, and also that they be observed in a classroom setting while interventions were put in place. Thus the adminsitratiors were able to draw results both from IQ scores and actual classroom preformance.
In “Can You Build a Better Brain”, the author, Sharon Begley discusses how the cognition processes better. He starts by presenting some experiments that prove nutrition did not support the brain smarter. According to the article, he believes that the “cognitive capacity” can be amended by concentration in people’s behavior. He further believes that people’s intelligence do not depend on own skills; however, as long as people peceive new things, their synapses and brain systems will
In the chapter “Attention Deficit: The Brain Syndrome of Our Era,” from The New Brain, written by Richard Restak, Restak makes some very good points on his view of multitasking and modern technology. He argues that multitasking is very inefficient and that our modern technology is making our minds weaker. Multitasking and modern technology is causing people to care too much what other people think of them, to not be able to focus on one topic, and to not be able to think for themselves.
"Can You Make Yourself Smarter? Written by Dan Hurley first published in 2011 in The New York Times newspaper described ways to increase fluid intelligence, which allows people to manipulate data and solve problems.
In the article “Brain Gain: The Underground World of “Neuroenhancing” Drugs” (Yorker 2009) Margaret Talbot discusses the misuse of prescription drugs that enhance academic performance at the college level. First Talbot introduces readers to a young college history major at Harvard University named Alex who receives a description of a demanding, busy life which seems impossible to control without the safety unapproved adopted use of a drug named Adderall. After that Alex’s dependency on the prescription drugs cognitive enhancers is described when he asks his doctor to increase the amount of intake and the listing of his daily routine on using Adderall during a week that required him to write four term papers. Next Talbot describes a personal
Memory plays a significant role in the everyday lives of people of all ages. It allows them to recall information and remember skills that were learned in the past. Memory also organizes past information to help people make current and future decisions. However, imagine forgetting the names of close family members or not having the ability to find your keys every time you want to leave the house. These are some of the struggles that people with Alzheimer’s disease face daily. Alzheimer’s disease was first identified by German neurologist Alois Alzheimer in 1906, and was discovered to have an overpowering effect on explicit memory loss (Gruetzner, 1988). There are two types of Alzheimer’s disease – early onset and late onset. Early onset occurs in patients who are diagnosed before the age of 65 whereas late onset occurs in patients who are diagnosed after the age of 65. In the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, short-term memory is often lost. As Alzheimer’s disease progresses, problems with long-term memory begin to develop, in addition to short-term memory impairments. Although a lot is known about the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, the cause has not been conclusively identified. However, as research continues, new theories about the cause of Alzheimer’s disease are being proposed. This has led to a controversy over whether Alzheimer’s disease is caused by genetics or environmental influences (Gruetzner, 1988).
...however issues such as reliability, validity and bias occur when studying brain damaged patients therefore is not always a valid way of studying working memory (in Smith, 2007).
Kumar, S., Rao, S. L., Sunny, B., & Gangadhar, B. N. (2007) Widespread cognitive impairment
Research studies established by Herlitz, Nilsson, and Backman prove that sex differences favor women when it comes to episodic memory. In this research experiment these psychologists took about 1,000 applicants, both male and female, between ages of 35 – 80, and asked them to remember a list of words; the study showed that women outperformed men by 25 percent. Coming to the conclusion that, since women were able to recall more words than men they evidently had the better episodic memory. Furthermore this article expands upon this subcategory of memory by describing the two types of tasks involved with it: verbal-production ta... ...
Doornhein, K. & De Haan, E.H.F.(1998). Cognitive Training for Memory Deficits in Stroke Patients. Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, 8(4), 393-400.
Saha, G., Halder, S., & DAS, P. (2013). A Comparative study of short term memory and long term memory between athlete and non athlete. Indian Streams Research Journal, 2(12), 1-5.
In a 1921 symposium entitled “Intelligence and Its Measurement”, psychiatrists were asked to define intelligence and their answers varied greatly. One described intelligence as “equivalent to the capacity to learn.” Other definitions included “the ability to adapt adequately to relatively new situations”, “the capacity to learn or profit from experience”, and “the knowledge that an individual possesses.” And one stated that there was no simple definition to the word because “intelligence involves two factors- the capacity for knowledge and knowledge possessed” (Sternberg & Detterman, 1986, p.39-40).
Throughout the course of history many people in time had no idea that many creatures of life had brains. With remarkable breakthroughs in technology and through human ability to take pictures of the human brain through head scans, scientists have discovered and mapped out the human brain. As neuroscientists understand how the brain works, discovery of brain-based learning has been a growing field ever since. Education is extremely important for human beings because the more educated we are as a society the better we contribute to society. Knowledge is extremely powerful and as a future educator, understanding how the brain works and developing lesson plans surrounding the inner workings of the brain will allow learning to manifest in the classroom.
Historically, memory has been a recurring topic in cognition research. Through the years, many scientific findings have helped us to understand how memory works. Since, older adults are the subgroup most affected by frequent memory deficiencies, they would be highly benefited with the advance of the cognitive
Cognitive enhancement represents one of the most debated topics in the neuroscience community Within the last ten years, increasing attention has been given to the use of cognitive enhancers, but there is still only a limited amount of information concerning the use, effect and functioning of cognitive enhancement in daily life on healthy subjects (Clemlow and Walker, 2014).