Friday, May 11, 2012

My brain hurts, but less now

One of  the few things I did do every day while my parents were here was make my brain hurt by doing "brain training" on a site called Lumosity.  It's supposed to be helping neuroscientists who are studying how peoples' brain power improves through consistent exercises and is advertised on several of the blogs I read, most notably AoSHQ where another commenter said she'd been doing the free trial.

I decided to go ahead and give it a try since (as a single, home-schooling parent) I need my decision making and memory skills to be as sharp as possible.  The sensation I had after completing the first round of training was very strange.  I didn't have a headache, but it was very similar.  During the trial period I also played did many more than the standard five games a day (where as, now that I've paid, now I do it every day but only the regular amount which I think shows in the fact that I've plateaued as opposed to the quick increases of the first few days). 

Memberships came on sale a couple of days after the free trial expired and I decided to buy a year and see how it goes.  My real interest is in seeing what affect, if any, this training has on my real-world mental abilities since all the cool graphs in the world don't do me any good if there's no personal improvement. I am assuming that, rather like Head-start programs have shown, once training ends there will be a distinct drop in any increased abilities so I'm hoping to get as much out of this as possible right now.

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