Many of us can relate to the experience of downloading a game on your phone to pass the time for half an hour…only to realise you’ve been staring at your screen for over an hour and you’re utterly hooked!
This is especially true of brain training games – but the good news is that while they’re unmistakably addictive, brain training also has many benefits.
From improved memory to increasing productivity, below we’ve listed some of the top benefits to brain training games and why you should definitely keep up your practice!
1. Helps With Memory
This is the biggest benefit of brain training games (and, some would argue, the only real benefit besides having fun!).
Brain training games are designed to test your memory with a range of different games and challenges. There is evidence that some of these games can be effective at sharpening certain skills that can deteriorate with age, such as decision making, reaction time, and short-term memory.
2. Reduces Risk For Dementia Or Alzheimers
In 2015, research found that brain training games can be directly associated with an improvement in reasoning, verbal learning, as well as completing daily tasks in a study of over 7,000 participants with Alzheimers.
The study found that changes were most apparent in people who played the brain training games at least five times a week – although it should be noted that these studies are rather small-scale and cannot be considered conclusive evidence of brain training games’ ability to improve cognitive function across the board.
3. Improved Attention Span
Another benefit of brain training games is that they focus on improving your attention span – a skill that can certainly transfer across to your personal and professional life.
If you’ve been struggling to concentrate recently, downloading a game that really focuses on boosting your concentration and improving your attention span could be a great idea.
4. Increased Reaction Time
Brain training games also focus on helping you to improve your reaction times with timed challenges and quick-fire rounds aimed to test your speed, attention, and ability to react quickly and accurately.
Of course, this might not always carry across to physical situations where a quick reaction is essential, but it can be helpful when it comes to making decisions more efficiently and with more confidence.
5. Mental Agility
Brain training games are also designed to test your mental agility. This relates to your problem solving skills, your ability to think critically, and solve problems efficiently.
Improving your mental agility is something we can all benefit from, and a great by-product of regularly completing the challenges on your brain training app!
What To Look For In A Good Brain Training Game
So, now you know the key benefits of brain training games your next challenge is finding one that will challenge you properly.
A few features good brain training games will have include:
- Measuring your performance: You want to know that all this training you’re doing is actually paying off! Make sure whatever app you download has the ability to measure your performance over time.
- A variety of games and challenges: It would be difficult for a game to be able to test your reaction time, attention span, memory, and everything else all at once, so whatever games you use, make sure there are a variety of challenges on offer to get the full spectrum of benefits.
- Premium subscription plans: You might not want to invest any money into your brain training games, but an app with a premium option at least shows you that if you want to level up, you have the option to do so in the future.
Highly-Rated Brain Training Games
The following brain training games are all highly rated for providing a full range of the benefits listed above:
- Luminosity: an app with both a free and premium subscription available, with a number of daily challenges and tests.
- Elevate: this app has over 35 games and tracks your progress across five different types of development so you can really deep dive into your performance over time.
- Peak: contains over 30 games designed to test your attention, mental agility, memory, and language.
- Scrabble: Scrabble and other word games are fantastic for boosting your vocabulary and language skills – and you can also use word tools to help you make the most out of your games and really boost your score.
Overall, there are many benefits to playing brain training games – while not all of these benefits are necessarily backed by research and evidence, there’s no doubt that they leave you feeling more productive and sharpen your mind after a quick bout of daily challenges.
Besides, even if you just have a spare 10 minutes or so in the day, playing some brain training games for fun is a much better use of your time than other games, and you might gain some useful mental agility skills that transfer to other parts of your life as an added bonus!
