Dr Kawashima's Brain Training (DS)

Gamecow’s Price	RRP $49.95     Save $4.00 $45.95
Availability
Genre	Action Adventure: Puzzle
Platform	Nintendo DS
Release Date	15/06/2006
Rated

Everybody, young or old, will benefit from Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training.  We can all do with a bit brain stimulation and memory enhancement.  Brain Training is that effective, some overseas schools have introduced Brain Training and the Nintendo DS console into classrooms.

The studies have identified  an improvement in the students grades and memory skills, of course, results will vary, but it can be a fun way for kids to improve their memory without actually realising it (like hiding kids broccoli in their mashed veges).

Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training is also a great way to pass the time on the train travel to work.  If you don’t believe me, next time you are on the train look around the carriage and you will be surprised how many people are playing a Nintendo DS or DSi.

Dr Kawashima's Brain Training (DS) Product Information

Exercise Your Brain
Exercise is the key to good health, both for body and mind-and now there's finally a way to make mental exercise simple, fun, even competitive. Inspired by the work of prominent Japanese neuroscientist Dr. Ryuta Kawashima, Brain Training features activities designed to help stimulate your brain and give it the workout it needs like solving simple math problems, counting people going in and out of a house simultaneously, drawing pictures on the Nintendo DS touch screen, and reading classic literature out loud.

With the Nintendo DS handheld game system, playing Brain Training is easy! The touch screen lets users write their answers with a Stylus pen, as if they were writing on paper or using a Palm Pilot. And, with Nintendo DS's voice recognition technology, Brain Training can identify particular words you'll speak during certain activities. Want to see the DS in action? Check out our tutorial.

The first time you play Brain Training, you'll take a series of tests and get a score that determines your DS brain age. Brain Training tracks your progression with easy-to-read line charts so you always know how well you're doing. By using Brain Training just minutes a day, the better you'll get at the exercises and the lower your DS Brain Age will become.

Baby Boomers and school kids alike want to challenge themselves and find ways to stay sharp. Brain Training acts like a treadmill for the mind. Brain Training's challenging and rewarding exercises give your brain the workout it craves!

Dr Kawashima's Brain Training (DS) Review

Brain Training is loosely based on the work of Professor Ryuta Kawashima of the Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan. The professor’s work is mainly in neurology – he wrote the best selling book Train Your Brain: 60 Days to a Better Brain, which inspired the videogame. The book was full of things people could do to keep their mind fresh – Brain Training is essentially an extension of the research that inspired the book. Many people believe we only use 10% of our brain, but Professor Kawashima’s research shows that that is a load of rubbish (the only activity that uses such low brain functionality is watching television – even sleeping stimulates your brain more).

Brain Training contains a collection of simple exercises designed to stimulate the pre-frontal cortex and strengthen one’s overall cognitive powers. The game also has a set of exercises to determine your Brain Age, as well as around 100 Sudoku puzzles. Players are greeted by a digitised version of the disembodied head of Professor Kawashima, who will instruct you to create a profile, which will allow you to track your progress in each exercise as well as your overall Brain Age.

The brain exercises each test a different area of your cognitive abilities. The calculation exercises (available in sets of 30 or 100) are quite easy, but are designed to test speed and accuracy. Reading aloud will test how quickly you can read aloud through a chapter of classic literature. While the game’s speech recognition isn’t actually in effect here, Brain Training does have mechanisms in place for preventing cheating in the reading challenge. Low to High is a sequential memory challenge where a series of numbers appears on screen momentarily, and players have to tap the empty boxes in order from lowest to highest.

Testing your Brain Age is quite similar to doing the regular training exercises – some of them are repeated, but most of the exercises are different. The first of these is the stroop test, where the player must say the colour of the word that appears on the screen, the trick being that the word itself is a colour. For example, the word “black” will appear on screen, but it will be coloured yellow. Word memory gives you a list of 20 words, and two minutes to commit the list to memory. When the time expires, you have three minutes to write down as many words as you possibly can.

Ultimately, Brain Training is a game that is easily accessible to all people, not just those who are avid gamers. The exercises are pretty addictive, especially if you’re the type of person who likes to challenge themselves, but they’re also quite beneficial – you’ll notice that your cognitive abilities will improve in the short term with continued practice on the game, and in some cases, you might even feel a bit better.

Full review PALGN