Street of Dreams blends attention and memory exercises into an increasingly-challenging, dream home building brain game. You are an up-and-coming architect, looking to become a world-renowned Dream Home Builder. You purchase land and construct homes, seeking to create a valuable “Street of Dreams”. Building and selling premium homes earns you cash to build your very own Ultimate Dream Home.

Features:

• Engaging word association game that requires strong contrentration
• Object of the game is to build a beautiful dream home
• Hundreds of hours of brain stimulating gameplay

Street of Dreams is a concentration game. Click here to play Street of Dreams!

Paradise Island is a collection of word-construction brain games set in a variety of beautiful tropical themes. You will alternate between syllable construction and letter/word building language activities while collecting exotic trinkets and rewards.

Key Features:

• Challenging word creation game
• 200+ unique catagories with 30,000+ words
• Hundreds of hours of brain stimulating gameplay

Wouldn’t you love to sip your favorite tropical drink on the white sand beach of your very own Paradise Island?

Paradise Island is a language game. Click here to play Paradise Island!

The Washington Post reported on a recent study out of the National Institute of Mental Health. The study found that different brain areas are activated when a person moves up or down in social status or sees people who are socially superior or inferior. The brain seemed to activate in a similar manner to winning money.

 The scientists indicate that our position in social hierarchies affects motivation as well as physical and mental health. Past research has supported the relationship between social rank and health. For example, persons with a lower social status had a higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease and to die early. Psychological effects to include loss of control over one’s environment may be one trigger for the relationship to poor health.

 The brain seems to have a hard wiring for hierarchical information and that this information is important to us. Our desire to compete, play to win, and to be motivated are directly linked to brain circuitry.

 This most likely explains our civilization’s interest in sports, gaming, and competition. Our own individual struggle to reach our specific potential in areas of school, work, or skill development also fit into this model. It may not be such a stretch to suggest that our drive to personal health, including brain health involves such brain circuitry and that computerized mental exercises that provide explicit feedback on our performance is one tangible example of competitive health behavior. 

Click here to read the Washington Post article 

The NY Times recently reported on a new study that showed it is possible to improve brainpower. The study demonstrated that training the brain in particular cognitive or thinking processes actually help to improve those particular processes. This should make sense as the brain is a dynamic system that will respond to environmental input.

The resistance to such belief lies in the long held and erroneous position that the human brain is a rigid and fixed system that is somehow set by age five! We now know the human brain has “plasticity” and can be shaped across the lifespan. In fact, your brain does not know how old it is, it simply wants to be stimulated.

New research from the University of Michigan supports the power of brain fitness (e.g. brain games) on the ability of the brain to acquire new information. Our ability to learn new information historically has been labeled “fluid intelligence.” This tends to be information we did not acquire in school and that we have no background exposure. In contrast, information acquired in school that is over learned is referred to as “crystallized intelligence.”

Researchers found that new learning (fluid intelligence) increased with increased exposure to the training stimuli. They asserted that fluid intelligence can increase with appropriate training. They are not sure how long the gains will last after training stops, but gains are made with intervals of 8 to 19 days of training for 30 minutes a day.

While research is catching up on what probably is a very practical and basic reality: the human brain, like many of our systems is influenced by environmental input. In the case of the brain the stimuli tends to be information that is processed from the outside world. Repetitive brain exercise (e.g. brain games) will have an outcome and it is reasonable to think that it will be positive with regard to learning. And yes, there will also be a neurostructural and neurochemical change as well.

To read the NY Times article, click here 

The market has witnessed a surge in the brain fitness software industry. More companies are purporting to be the best at training your brain and helping to sharpen cognitive or thinking skills.

One primary concern for this industry is to create software that is both fun and personally relevant. In fact, a primary focus of FitBrains is to be the leader of fun and personal relevance within the industry of brain fitness software. I believe that brain games can be both fun and have real life and personal value to a consumer.

We are all confronted with life’s daily challenges, each of which places demands on our brain for solutions or action. It is within this arena that FitBrains has captured the personal value: creating brain games that actually tap into real world challenges for the consumer. How many times have you lost a pair of socks in the laundry, forgotten the name of someone you met, misplaced your car keys or perhaps the car itself in the parking garage? Life provides us with real world games and the opportunity for real world mental exercise.

FitBrains takes this reality and champions brain fitness for the fun and personally relevant. We believe your arousal level will increase and you will be more deeply engaged in our brain games. Why? The task is more valuable or meaningful to you as a person. Companies that simply develop memory games or language games without the value of personal relevance are simply tasks to be completed. Personalization sparks long term commitment by the consumer for a healthy brain.

Nearly everyone experiences the inability to recall a name or to struggle trying to find the correct word. These moments are referred to “tip of the tongue” phenomena and can be quite frustrating. The good news is that word finding problems is not necessarily a sign of pathology or disease, and indeed likely represents changes that occur with the normal aging process.

Around the age of 50 our brains begin to change structurally and functionally. We lose brain cells over the lifespan with a disproportionate number of cells lost in the frontal lobes. These are normal changes and the functional change associated with aging is also considered normal. We tend not to freely recall information, our information processing speed slows, and we may struggle with word finding. Once again, these are typically considered normal changes with aging and it is most common to experience such changes around age 50.

I believe that brain exercise, particularly in the cognitive areas listed above, can help to keep these functions relatively sharp and maintained. Passivity certainly will not help the brain and indeed it may exacerbate the changes in our cognitive processes.

Get started today on brain games and turn to FitBrains as your source for a good brain fitness workout.

Hello!  My name is Mark Baxter, and I am a Co-founder and the Vice President of Product Development here at Fit Brains.  I have a background in Psychology and have over 8 years of experience in the Games & New Media Industry creating top-quality games for broad audiences, including several hit titles on entertainment portals including Shockwave, Yahoo! and RealArcade.

I will be regularly blogging on a variety of perspectives related to Health and Entertainment, with a significant focus on Brain Fitness.  As such, I will be exploring topics relating to Psychology & Mental Wellness, ‘Brain Games, Serious & ‘Casual’ Gaming, and Online Social Communities.  Serious Games – defined as interactive content that uses entertainment for the purpose of education and/or training – has only recently gained wider acceptance with the advent of industry gatherings like the Serious Games Initiative in 2002.  This genre is growing quickly and covers a wide range of topics, including: education, corporate training, health and environmental awareness, to name just a few.

Increasingly our society is becoming aware of a concept that has long been at the foundation of effective children’s education: fun can be a great motivator for learning and growth!  Fortunately, at Fit Brains we very much believe that the value of fun as a motivator applies to adults as well.  If we can make important aspects of our daily routine more accessible and engaging, we are more likely to do things we might not be as motivated to do – especially items like long-term health goals that are often difficult to maintain.

For instance, do you have greater interest in enjoyable physical activities like golf or rollerblading, or a prescribed fitness regimen?  Are you more likely to stick to a diet with food that’s healthy but bland, or food that’s healthy and tastes good?  For most, the answers to these questions are self-evident; any task that can be made more enjoyable will also be easier to integrate more consistently into our daily lives.  In the coming weeks and months, I will be exploring a variety of ways that Serious Games are gaining mainstream acceptance, and also take a look at the growing body of research that demonstrates their value in our everyday lives.

We believe that entertainment is a great motivational tool for healthy living.  Our goal is to provide you with a wide variety of entertaining games & activities that have a solid foundation in cognitive science.  At Fit Brains, we harness the power of FUN to help you keep your mind healthy and sharp!

More and more we hear and read about the supposed powers of mental exercise. While this seems to make sense it is natural to wonder how and why a “brain fitness” is beneficial.

We have learned within the past decade that the human brain has the ability to generate new brain cells (neurogenesis). The hippocampus, a structure that lies deep in the middle of each temporal lobe and serves functions of memory, learning, and spatial representation, is the site of such neurogenesis. Interestingly, this is the exact site of neurogenesis established in rodents in the 1950s. There appears to be something critically important about the hippocampus with regard to new brain cell development.

Similar to rodent brains the human brain reacts to environmental input in generally predictable ways. Damaging, punishing, and negative input can do structural and functional damage to the hippocampus. In contrast, positive, nurturing, and stimulating input can help to foster structural and functional enhancements. As we noted earlier on this blog, the human brain seeks and enjoys mental stimulation and exposure to the “novel and complex.”

A daily brain workout (e.g. brain games) can help to provide the brain (cortex) the stimulation it seeks. Environments that are considered complex and novel by your brain will provide the most benefit particularly when compared to input that is rote and passive. Daily brain games that challenge the cortex will also help to build new cellular connections (synapses) that in turn reflect “brain reserve.” Recall, brain reserve is believed to delay the onset of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s Disease.

One of the greatest fears of the baby boomers, those born between 1946 and 1964, is the loss of memory and onset of dementia. A proactive approach to try and delay the onset of such loss and disease is a lifelong brain health lifestyle, part of which includes daily exposure to the novel and complex. Brain fitness workout makes good sense so get started today!!

Two recent studies show further evidence that both physical and brain exercise (e.g. brain games) have a positive impact on the brain. In the first study, USA Today reports “children who play vigorously for 20 to 40 minutes a day may be better able to organize schoolwork, do class projects and learn mathematics”.  In the second study, the BBC reports, “a Dundee school took part in the project to show how computer games can enhance and build on classroom learning”.  These studies illustrate the need for education systems to include more physical and mental exercise in the curriculum.   

In the last several years, similar studies have been published that indicate the same holds true for adults. With a global aging population, both physical and brain fitness are important and need to be apart of our daily life. As a society, we should all make an effort to keep our bodies and minds functioning at a high level.  For more information on these articles, click on the links below: 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7064196.stm·    

 http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-10-29-exercise-brains_N.htm   

Here is part 2 to the inital brain health blog from Dr. Nussbaum.

 Your Brain Health

1. Brain health begins in the womb and needs to be promoted across your lifespan.

2. Engage in the novel and complex not the rote and passive.

3.Consider the following Brain Health Lifestyle to build up your brain reserve:

Five Domains of the Brain Health Lifestyle: Socialization 

• Do not isolate or segregate as you get older. People who isolate have a higher risk for dementia.

• Join groups and social organizations in your community.

• Maintain and build your friendship and family network.

• Be forgiving.

• Develop hobbies.

• Do not retire.

Physical Activity

• Walk between 7,000 and 12,000 steps daily. Walking several times a week reduces the risk of dementia.

• Buy yourself a pedometer to remind yourself to walk and to keep track of your daily steps.

• Dance as this is a behavior that reduces the risk of dementia.

• Garden and Knitting reduce the risk of dementia.

• Aerobic exercise will help the heart and thereby feed the brain with the necessary blood and oxygen. It also promotes cognitive functioning such as memory and is now believed to relate to positive structural changes in the brain.

• Use both sides of your body more often: Become ambidextrous.

Mental Stimulation

• Play Fit Brains brain games

• Learn a second language.

• Read and write (use your nondominant hand) on a daily basis: the more complex the better.

• Learn sign language as it increases IQ and increased IQ reduces the risk of dementia.

• Play board games as board game playing reduces the risk of dementia.

• Travel reduces the risk of dementia because it involves a new and complex environment.

• Play a musical instrument.

• Listen to classic music as it helps to increase learning.

• Problem solve.

Spirituality

• Pray on a daily basis as it enhances your immune system.

• Attend regularly a formal place of worship at it relates to better quality of life and longevity.

• Learn to meditate in order to slow down. Animals exposed to environments that are too stimulating demonstrate slowed brain development.

• Learn relaxation procedures with deep breathing and muscle relaxation.

• Slow down and do not be afraid to say “no”.

Nutrition

• Eat 80% of what you intend to eat at each meal. Reasonable caloric restriction can increase your longevity.

• Eat with utensils and you will eat less and also eat healthier foods.

• Increase your intake of Omega 3 fatty acids. This includes fatty fish such as salmon, sardines, and herring. Several ounces of salmon weekly reduce the risk of dementia. Walnuts and unsalted nuts are also good for you.

• Increase your intake of antioxidants. This includes Vitamins C and E. Colored fruits (grapes, apples, cantaloupe, and berries) and vegetables are good for you. The FDA recommends five servings of fruit and vegetables a day.

• Decrease your intake of processed foods and red meats. Lean meat such as chicken breast without skin is relatively okay.

• Green leafy vegetables are good for you.

• Eat one sit down meal with others a day. This activity provides many brain boosting effects at once (classic music, language, eating with utensils, slowing down, eating healthier foods).