Brain Games. The brain games industry is full of punch lines like “Give your brain a workout” or “Games that sharpen your mind”, punch lines that have little scientific evidence or academic research to support the claims. The brain games industry has been hijacked by software gaming companies hoping to sell thousands of apps leaving the real science based brain health companies wondering should they jump on the bandwagon. Maybe they could use punch lines like “Brain training helps you use 90% of your brain power”.
It would be funny except brain training and brain games have huge real world brain health benefits for kids and adults to raise IQ, address learning difficulties and improve intellectual capabilities. People whether kids or adults who turn to brain games, do so in the vast majority of cases to improve their learning ability or remedy some intellectual skills. They will also be paying in the belief that this will help them for school or business. Brain games companies will happily take their money knowing apart for some fun games users will extract little or none real life or learning improvement as there is no science, no research, and no credibility. Some brain games companies just copy or quote a few lines of research from a psychologist on brain training or cognitive health to try and gain customers trust. Then they just create some quirky games that might amuse but can never amount to anything else. People should be asking, can brain games really help improve my intelligence, what method and research has gone into a company’s brain products, has the brain game company any published research or clinical trials to support their business model. Brain games are part and parcel of cognitive health and psychology. Psychologists and scientists cannot just make up wild claims about their services. What sensible person would pay a doctor who told them they could cure them of some disease just by hoping around on one leg while clapping
your hands? Well brain games companies who can “sharpen your mind” will gladly take your money based on similar claims. Don’t misunderstand the point here, marketing and messaging a product is important, every brain training solution has a right to inform a potential customer the benefits of their product and it is all part of the packaging which consumers love. This article is all about asking customers, schools, educators or psychologists, who want to use a brain game to look under the hood, educate themselves on the real science and research going into brain health, is it a gaming company with a brain game product or a scientific based company with brain games. To nail our colors to the mast, RaiseYourIQ (and we are not the only ones) are on the side of science. Why, well simply we are first and foremost educational psychologists who have dedicated over 10 years research into intellectual skills training using “relational frame theory” at NUIM University. The outcome which is we have devised a scientifically proven method to raise IQ and intelligence based on relational skills training which we called SMART. We have not copied, borrowed or just quoted this SMART brain training method, we created it, completed the research (and is still on-going today), done clinical trials, published articles in scientific journals and we even wrote a book on it. The power of brain games within schools, education and business to improve intellectual skills and remedy learning difficulties is too big, too serious, and too important to be left to some large gaming companies who wish the science would go away. Only people can decide, brain games or game based intellectual brain skills training.