Source: China Daily

05-06-2009 14:23

A man sits on a train solving a crossword puzzle, a woman broods over a Sudoku grid while an ad for an electronic memory game flashes across a television screen. There is no shortage of ways to improve the brain's memory powers - after all, lots of people want to improve their mental abilities.

But are Sudoku, crosswords and other training games any good at improving memory? Are they really effective in training the mind or just a nice way of passing the time?

"If you train your brain, you can improve your performance," says Carsten Brandenburg from Germany's Memory Training Association. But not every exercise can radically change a person's ability to remember things.

"If you repeat the same kind of exercise, your mind gets into a routine, and there is no challenge anymore," says Brandenburg.

Sudoku is most effective in the initial stages. "The brain is not used to thinking in that manner and that's why new connections are made between the individual nerve cells," explains Brandenburg.

The chairwoman of the Professional Association of German Psychiatrists, Christa Roth-Sackenheim says: "We have recently come to understand that the human brain can make new connections and even new paths."

-- Click for more news in Tech Max >>