Kati sent a link to a piece in the New Yorker on Anti-Aging games: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2012/01/30/120130ta_talk_seabrook
Fountain of Youth Dept.
Re-Start
by John Seabrook January 30, 2012
Nolan Bushnell stopped by the office the other day, to play an anti-aging video game. “It’s what I call a ‘looking forward by looking backward’ game,” he said, settling in at the keyboard and loosening up his shoulders. “Meaning that you have to be able to solve a problem using information you received before you were distracted by something else. That’s why older people lose their cars in parking lots. They park, then they go in and shop—that’s the distraction—and then they can’t remember where they put their car.”
This also reminded me that I saw a CEO profile in the Tribune of the founder of Marbles: The Brain Store, Lindsey Gaskins, the other day:
The Brain Store sells puzzles and games under the guise of improving cognition and fighting age-related cognitive decline. The article is more about the business side of the store, but I had heard of them before and didn’t realize it was a Chicago-area company.
The fact that people can sell brain training doesn’t necessarily mean that it works. But it probably does.