Really, that game made me smarter?

During the summer of 2005 a video game was promoted in unusual scenarios .A powerful marketing campaign sponsored by celebrities such as Nicole Kidman or Cheryl Cole-Amparo Baro in Spain-gave way to a small video game for Nintendo DS: ' Brain Training by Dr.Kawashima.How old is your brain? '.

With more than 100 million consoles sold, the project, designed under the advice of Japanese neuroscientist Ryuta Kawashima , seemed like the revolution for our exhausted brains, the cousin of sudoku and the crossword puzzle The project was announced to improve our cognitive function , to avoid that dreaded deterioration related to Alzheimer's.At the end of the day, if the brain is a muscle, increasing the blood flow over it we could sharpen our memory.Or not?

In just one month we will have a revised and fully updated version: 'Brain Training of Dr.Kawashima', with 18 new challenges and several systems of exercises rethought, but the question on the table is identical: Can this game improve our memory, ability to calculate and intuition?

A MUSCLE WITH LONG-TERM PERFORMANCE

In 2009, the professor of cognitive psychology Alain Lieury, from the University of Brittany (Rennes), affirmed that Dr.Kawashima's game is nothing more than «pure chattering» .After a study With three groups of children, only the group of children who used paper and pencil partially improved performance in memory games.33%.Those who played the game without physical media, 17%, even worsened.

The following year, David J.Miller and Derek P.Robertson presented an opposite study, carrying out the test on children under 11 years of age for 9 weeks, obtaining clear demonstrations of an improvement in agility and speed in the majority of subjects .

Faced with these two scenarios faced, who to believe? Cogmed says that his games improve attention by up to 50% in children with ADHD.A large majority of specialists and speech therapists are positioned by "doing nothing." That is, let the brain rest and memorize in the way as relaxed and natural as possible .Something like Wu Wei.

From a large block of studies presented over the last decade-a broad glossary can be consulted here-we can draw a more or less general conclusion: Short-term brain training does not exist . These improvements would only be achieved through firm and prolonged work , supervised by a specialist and analyzing the guidelines during the process.

If there is a scientific consensus to avoid the bullous phrases and the publicity of these panaceas for our tired heads, a deceptive tone is often used in brain training and we are not all the same type of patients: chronic stress and anxiety accelerate memory loss .A balanced diet can achieve the opposite.

VIDEOGAMES KEEP THE BRAIN IN GOOD CONDITION

Really, that game made me smarter?

On the other hand, many video games demand high levels of concentration and lateral thinking.Puzzles and maps do not seem to fulfill a function within "practical intelligence," but the reality is that they are ideal for solving problems that we will then move to daily life, a test bench where to train.

The modern puzzle dates back to 1766 , when London's John Spilsbury hit one of his maps on a wooden panel, then cut out its contours and created "pieces." This little toy soon became in a didactic hobby to teach geography among British schoolchildren.

Since then we have thought of the puzzles as a mathematical problem that we should solve.Not so: when we analyze it we understand its nature.And by puzzle games it will not be.From the time of the primitive'Tetris 'until today, this is one of the most prodigious (and prodigious) genres.

FEZ: WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF THE HYPERCUBES

An ode to perfection, a master play in times where only fordiana production is aspired.Phil Fish is its only creator.'Fez 'is a puzzle game. It was announced on July 17, 2007 and until 2012 would not be «playable» .In this mad work we must analyze the pictorial patterns of the environment and solve three-dimensional puzzles by turning the "screen".

Once we achieve a certain number of blocks, we go to the next level.A large part of the puzzles are solved by cryptanalysis, deciphering a writing and numbering system invented by Fish himself.

This game helps to better understand spatial analysis.In addition to being truly challenging, 'Fez' is a game that invites you to take a notebook and write down the different routes that we have been following, not only to not get lost, but to understand the vast universe of the game itself, which folds over itself and even seems to get corrupted.

THE TALOS PRINCIPLE: PERSIGUING TO TARTARO

Really, that game made me smarter?

Croteam is a study of Croatian development that spent years designing games based on making the idiot.Literally: behaving like a jerk and attacking everyone .'The Talos Principle' will discolor any user who knows this team.during the first minutes.

A combination of scenarios inspired by ancient civilizations-Greece/Classic Rome-on which a science fiction plot develops, where a great technological god has created a perfect world on which to progress by solving different puzzles environmental and mechanical. Each "level" is preceded by a brief philosophical reading that hides the first line of the plot: it is all part of a great simulator project that did not come out very well.

The game encourages lateral thinking to the point of blocking ourselves: if we want to continue advancing we must "trick" the game, think of an alternative, perform an action that escapes the precepts we had followed until then, a bold perspective that will invite us to try any madness in order to get out of that Dionysian prison .

THE WITNESS: THE ISLAND OF WONDERS

Really, that game made me smarter?

Behind this game is also an only effervescent mind: Jonathan Blow, a Californian father of ' Braid '-one of the pillars of the phenomenon indie -Anvil has not been responsible for programming all the ideas, if is the author of the more than 650 puzzles that hide on the island .Because, indeed, the game starts when we appear in the middle of an island, without reason Apparently.Solving all these puzzles can take 60 to 90 hours.

Moreover, once we complete the general set to finish the game, we can access a mountain where we will be tested, through algorithmically generated puzzles that will have to be solved in a maximum seven minutes.

'The Witness' activates the Stockholm syndrome while triggering the Tetris effect-which we already talked about in this special-one of those challenges in which most of the players throw in the towel and only a few crown the top.

PORTAL: THE SCIENCE OF THE GAME

Really, that game made me smarter?

'Portal' is the culmination of the puzzle game.In addition, it acts as one of those springs that encourage pouncing on similar games.Unfortunately, there is nothing like it in the genre. This little piece of Valve presented in 2007 you can only compete with its continuation , 'Portal 2'.

Designer Kim Swift and her team of specialists, first creators of the Narbacular Drop prototype and after the version they showed to test within the DigiPen Institute of Technology, published a project that takes much further than that achieved by the Big Brain Academy 'o'Brain Challenge' de rigor: make people think after playing .And what if it is a certainty it is that video games remain in our brain as a powerful influence.For years.

Images | Croteam, Valve, Ubisoft, Thekla Inc., Wikipedia

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