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Here's a mystery to me: the failure of brain training games vs. the success of meditation. The science for brain training games is not encouraging. A number of

Here's a mystery to me: the failure of brain training games vs. the success of meditation. The science for brain training games is not encouraging. A number of studies have found that they do not produce generalizable mental improvements. Meanwhile, every time I turn around I run into a study of mindfulness meditation that did produce a generalizable improvement to mental abilities. For example, I was just reading one about how meditation can reduce pain perception by 40% and that measurement was backed up by MRI imaging of reduced brain activity in pain centers. Let's call meditation a brain game that works. The mystery then is why is there only one game that works? Will we ever find a second?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
andreyk 10y ago
Well, I think there are different types and methodologies of meditation that are believed to work. My guess is studies tend to focus on one format to be consistent and build on each other. Meditation at its core is nothing but practicing focus and self control, so my guess is a whole range of 'games' is possible to achieve the same effect but sitting down and focusing on your breath is basically the most practical. I have not played the brain games and so can't comment on why they appear not to achieve the same effect - perhaps they put too much focus into the abstractions and visuals of the game, and not the introspection of meditation.
- diyseguy 10y ago
  > Meditation at its core is nothing but practicing focus and self control You nailed it. Mental acuity is all about the ability to remain focused. Probably most of what gets written off as stupidity is really just an untrained mind that can't stay focused on a subject, task, conversation, etc. Meditation has the benefit of being restful as well as enhancing focus. Intensive game playing, while not necessarily relaxing, does inspire a greatly increased measure of focus. I am not convinced that brain games are ineffective. Weren't there recently numerous studies asserting that video game playing provided cognitive benefits?
- vidar 10y ago
  I would suggest that focus and self-control are not the core of meditation. It can profoundly influence the way you see the world, way beyond what you describe.
fsloth 10y ago
As a person who loves games and has some experience of mindfullness/zen meditation: Games are about reasoning and reacting to external stimuli. Meditation usually involves more passive observation of self's inner self. To put it another way - games are dissociative, while meditation (the mindfulness kind anyway) aims to be anti-dissociative. One more point of view: I can play a game hours without being aware of the time that has gone by. When meditating I'm aware of each breath I take. I have no vocabulary to exactly specify how games and meditation are different - I can only state that the experience is different.
bharath28 10y ago
I'd be hesitant to call meditation a game in the same sense that other brain training exercise seem to be. Those games tend to have distinct end points (or multiple)/goals or something you are ambling towards. Meditation on the other hand, is based on focused observation of how your mind works. When done right, there is no goal or judgement - no end state that you are uneasily pushing towards.
- dhimes 10y ago
  But is that the important part of meditation that leads to the results? I don't think we understand it well enough yet to know.
  - goldfeld 10y ago
    We have in fact understood it for millenia, but scientific instrumentation can't probe it like human inquiry has.
    - cJ0th 10y ago
      And this is what I find worrying concerning the time we are living in. Society by and large moved from rejecting science to demanding scientific studies on everything. While this has certainly been a move in the right direction it led many people to having a very limited perception of the real world. There is more than words and numbers and I am not talking about some bullshit magical powers but this stuff has to be experienced. And why do I say this? Because I believe that this stuff which exists besides words and numbers is, like words and numbers, a subset of the resources that enable intelligence. So there is nothing wrong with brain training games and perhaps they do increase intelligence but don't be surprised if training only a tiny portion of what enables intelligence does not lead to enormous results. In my opinion meditation can be an overwhelming perhaps even painful experience and thus it challenges you more seriously than, say, finding the next number in a sequence. No pain, no gain.
mamon 10y ago
Meditation is about focus, that's it. A person is born with some innate intelligence, but, thanks to things like television, email, Facebook, etc. we are far from our full potential, because we are constantly distracted. Once you regain your focus you hit the ceiling of your possible IQ. Meditating further will not do you much good past that point.
- coldtea 10y ago
  People meditated far before there were "things like television, email, Facebook, etc.". It's not just about "quiet time".
  - dhimes 10y ago
    But there were other distractions. We can always find distractions. This is as good of a hypothesis as any I've seen, but I agree that we don't really know yet why meditation works. Does walking meditation do the same thing? Meditative Tai Chi? Playing basketball "in the zone?" Or even playing video games "in the zone?"
    - tonystubblebine 10y ago
      Emotions are the universal distraction.
  - bharath28 10y ago
    Yes, agreed. Distractions don't have be television, email, Facebook... We spend a lot of time thinking about hypothetical situations that may occur in the future & how we'll react to them. Or reliving our versions of past events over and over. All of these distract from the present moment. Meditation still helps in these situations.
languagewars 10y ago
Your referenced study on meditation doesn't suffer from decontextualization.. While you are meditating you are acutely aware of senses like pain and you are managing them. I currently do language learning and music apps, AFAIK I am actually learning things that are directly applicable to the real world and that supposedly have cognative benefits correlated with having learned them traditionally. Do those benefits evaporate when I learn them in "games"?
hannob 10y ago
I think I can explain the mystery to you: You have a skewed view of the scientific evidence. The evidence for mindfulness and meditation is questionable at best. There's a lot of bad science, undeclared conflicts of interest and weak studies in that space. > For example, I was just reading one about how meditation can reduce pain perception by 40% and that measurement was backed up by MRI imaging of reduced brain activity in pain centers. This is a completely meaningless statement. What kind of study is that based on? An RCT or observational data? How many participants? A single study or a metaanalysis? Has it been replicated? Was it preregistered? All of that matters to decide whether that's just "a study" or reliable science. There are plenty of studies showing that brain games work, too. They're just of low quality.
- gf263 10y ago
  Have you ever meditated?
  - CoryG89 10y ago
    I guess it depends on your definition of meditation, since it's not an actual physical or mental state someone can be definitively in or not in. I might say that I meditate every night when I sleep for 5-8 hours.
    - smallnamespace 10y ago
      > since it's not an actual physical or mental state someone can be definitively in or not in How do you know that?
      - CoryG89 10y ago
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability I cannot know that, and neither can anyone else. The reasons being that meditation does not have a good scientific definition and is not falsifiable. We shouldn't consider it as science until both of those reasons change.
hypertexthero 10y ago
Brain training games use too much of the left, 'linear', analytical side of the brain. Meditation brings the right, 'rich', creative side to bear on a problem. I recommend drawing as a meditative activity. The following books have been helpful: Pragmatic Thinking and Learning by Andy Hunt Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards Search Inside Yourself by Chade-Meng Tan
prostoalex 10y ago
The practices focus on different parts of the brain. The games usually focus on the frontal cortex development (http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/believe-it-or-not-computer-games-can-be-healthy http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/believe-it-or-not-comp..., admittedly with with mixed success https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20407435 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20407435) while meditation seems to lead to an increase of brain cells in hippocampus https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3004979/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3004979/
westoncb 10y ago
There's actually a simple explanation for this: meditation trains brain functions that operate at a sufficiently general level to see cross-domain impacts, while brain training games don't (or at least the range of domains is much smaller). Let me give you an example of a popular form of meditation: You sit up straight in a comfortable place, not doing anything special, just listening to what's going on in your environment and tuning into sensations in your body (this happens automatically as long as you haven't 'assigned' yourself something else to do; once you get into this state, you might recognize it as familiar from when you were younger, or from a time when you were feeling particularly like "everything's okay" and you are just at home). Before starting this, you understand that you are going to watch/listen/feel your breath—and if you've had some practice, you don't try to do anything about it: you just wait and feel whatever comes up as time passes. Eventually it's like the queue of other things clears and you start tuning into your breath more and more until the sensations become very rich and relaxing. Thoughts will continue emerging for a good long while during this, and meditation teaches a certain response to noticing their arrival: you acknowledge them, as if you'd heard a small sound in the room, turned around and saw what it was, and then returned to what you were doing (often times meditators are encouraged to use a quick label for whatever mental thing comes up, e.g. 'thinking' or 'fear')—then, assuming you haven't got too wrapped up in the thought (either by following it, or by trying somehow to making it go away), the sensations of your breath return to the forefront. Two big things come from this: you become more relaxed afterward, which aids task performance in most domains directly; and, you learn all these pitfalls and techniques for maintaining focus on what you choose to focus on. One big one, for instance, is that a lot of people approach focus by seeing distractions as problems to be solved (whether they are thoughts, pains, environmental sounds—whatever), but eventually you see that what works is maintaining an equanimous attitude toward distractions, and simply returning your attention to what you're doing, while understanding you might get pulled away again shortly (and it's not enough to just 'know' this; you have to practice it). Lastly, meditators are typically encouraged to practice being in this 'aware but not trying to do anything' state while doing other things than sitting, which has got to help with generalizing. (Not to mention the desired mental state is just domain agnostic to begin with. When you're doing a task you either believe you know how to do it and go at it confidently, with little meta-thought; or you're observing/critiquing how you're doing it and trying to change routines you've stored for doing it. In the first state you're way more tuned into sense data which is relevant for actually executing the task in the present moment. Meditation helps you learn to enter the first state intentionally.)

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

andreyk 10y ago

Well, I think there are different types and methodologies of meditation that are believed to work. My guess is studies tend to focus on one format to be consistent and build on each other. Meditation at its core is nothing but practicing focus and self control, so my guess is a whole range of 'games' is possible to achieve the same effect but sitting down and focusing on your breath is basically the most practical. I have not played the brain games and so can't comment on why they appear not to achieve the same effect - perhaps they put too much focus into the abstractions and visuals of the game, and not the introspection of meditation.

diyseguy 10y ago
> Meditation at its core is nothing but practicing focus and self control You nailed it. Mental acuity is all about the ability to remain focused. Probably most of what gets written off as stupidity is really just an untrained mind that can't stay focused on a subject, task, conversation, etc. Meditation has the benefit of being restful as well as enhancing focus. Intensive game playing, while not necessarily relaxing, does inspire a greatly increased measure of focus. I am not convinced that brain games are ineffective. Weren't there recently numerous studies asserting that video game playing provided cognitive benefits?
vidar 10y ago
I would suggest that focus and self-control are not the core of meditation. It can profoundly influence the way you see the world, way beyond what you describe.

fsloth 10y ago

As a person who loves games and has some experience of mindfullness/zen meditation: Games are about reasoning and reacting to external stimuli. Meditation usually involves more passive observation of self's inner self. To put it another way - games are dissociative, while meditation (the mindfulness kind anyway) aims to be anti-dissociative. One more point of view: I can play a game hours without being aware of the time that has gone by. When meditating I'm aware of each breath I take. I have no vocabulary to exactly specify how games and meditation are different - I can only state that the experience is different.

bharath28 10y ago

I'd be hesitant to call meditation a game in the same sense that other brain training exercise seem to be. Those games tend to have distinct end points (or multiple)/goals or something you are ambling towards. Meditation on the other hand, is based on focused observation of how your mind works. When done right, there is no goal or judgement - no end state that you are uneasily pushing towards.

dhimes 10y ago
But is that the important part of meditation that leads to the results? I don't think we understand it well enough yet to know.
- goldfeld 10y ago
  We have in fact understood it for millenia, but scientific instrumentation can't probe it like human inquiry has.
  - cJ0th 10y ago
    And this is what I find worrying concerning the time we are living in. Society by and large moved from rejecting science to demanding scientific studies on everything. While this has certainly been a move in the right direction it led many people to having a very limited perception of the real world. There is more than words and numbers and I am not talking about some bullshit magical powers but this stuff has to be experienced. And why do I say this? Because I believe that this stuff which exists besides words and numbers is, like words and numbers, a subset of the resources that enable intelligence. So there is nothing wrong with brain training games and perhaps they do increase intelligence but don't be surprised if training only a tiny portion of what enables intelligence does not lead to enormous results. In my opinion meditation can be an overwhelming perhaps even painful experience and thus it challenges you more seriously than, say, finding the next number in a sequence. No pain, no gain.

mamon 10y ago

Meditation is about focus, that's it. A person is born with some innate intelligence, but, thanks to things like television, email, Facebook, etc. we are far from our full potential, because we are constantly distracted. Once you regain your focus you hit the ceiling of your possible IQ. Meditating further will not do you much good past that point.

coldtea 10y ago
People meditated far before there were "things like television, email, Facebook, etc.". It's not just about "quiet time".
- dhimes 10y ago
  But there were other distractions. We can always find distractions. This is as good of a hypothesis as any I've seen, but I agree that we don't really know yet why meditation works. Does walking meditation do the same thing? Meditative Tai Chi? Playing basketball "in the zone?" Or even playing video games "in the zone?"
  - tonystubblebine 10y ago
    Emotions are the universal distraction.
- bharath28 10y ago
  Yes, agreed. Distractions don't have be television, email, Facebook... We spend a lot of time thinking about hypothetical situations that may occur in the future & how we'll react to them. Or reliving our versions of past events over and over. All of these distract from the present moment. Meditation still helps in these situations.

languagewars 10y ago

Your referenced study on meditation doesn't suffer from decontextualization.. While you are meditating you are acutely aware of senses like pain and you are managing them. I currently do language learning and music apps, AFAIK I am actually learning things that are directly applicable to the real world and that supposedly have cognative benefits correlated with having learned them traditionally. Do those benefits evaporate when I learn them in "games"?

hannob 10y ago

I think I can explain the mystery to you: You have a skewed view of the scientific evidence. The evidence for mindfulness and meditation is questionable at best. There's a lot of bad science, undeclared conflicts of interest and weak studies in that space. > For example, I was just reading one about how meditation can reduce pain perception by 40% and that measurement was backed up by MRI imaging of reduced brain activity in pain centers. This is a completely meaningless statement. What kind of study is that based on? An RCT or observational data? How many participants? A single study or a metaanalysis? Has it been replicated? Was it preregistered? All of that matters to decide whether that's just "a study" or reliable science. There are plenty of studies showing that brain games work, too. They're just of low quality.

gf263 10y ago
Have you ever meditated?
- CoryG89 10y ago
  I guess it depends on your definition of meditation, since it's not an actual physical or mental state someone can be definitively in or not in. I might say that I meditate every night when I sleep for 5-8 hours.
  - smallnamespace 10y ago
    > since it's not an actual physical or mental state someone can be definitively in or not in How do you know that?
    - CoryG89 10y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability I cannot know that, and neither can anyone else. The reasons being that meditation does not have a good scientific definition and is not falsifiable. We shouldn't consider it as science until both of those reasons change.

hypertexthero 10y ago

Brain training games use too much of the left, 'linear', analytical side of the brain. Meditation brings the right, 'rich', creative side to bear on a problem. I recommend drawing as a meditative activity. The following books have been helpful: Pragmatic Thinking and Learning by Andy Hunt Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards Search Inside Yourself by Chade-Meng Tan

prostoalex 10y ago

The practices focus on different parts of the brain. The games usually focus on the frontal cortex development (http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/believe-it-or-not-computer-games-can-be-healthy http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/believe-it-or-not-comp..., admittedly with with mixed success https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20407435 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20407435) while meditation seems to lead to an increase of brain cells in hippocampus https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3004979/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3004979/

westoncb 10y ago

There's actually a simple explanation for this: meditation trains brain functions that operate at a sufficiently general level to see cross-domain impacts, while brain training games don't (or at least the range of domains is much smaller). Let me give you an example of a popular form of meditation: You sit up straight in a comfortable place, not doing anything special, just listening to what's going on in your environment and tuning into sensations in your body (this happens automatically as long as you haven't 'assigned' yourself something else to do; once you get into this state, you might recognize it as familiar from when you were younger, or from a time when you were feeling particularly like "everything's okay" and you are just at home). Before starting this, you understand that you are going to watch/listen/feel your breath—and if you've had some practice, you don't try to do anything about it: you just wait and feel whatever comes up as time passes. Eventually it's like the queue of other things clears and you start tuning into your breath more and more until the sensations become very rich and relaxing. Thoughts will continue emerging for a good long while during this, and meditation teaches a certain response to noticing their arrival: you acknowledge them, as if you'd heard a small sound in the room, turned around and saw what it was, and then returned to what you were doing (often times meditators are encouraged to use a quick label for whatever mental thing comes up, e.g. 'thinking' or 'fear')—then, assuming you haven't got too wrapped up in the thought (either by following it, or by trying somehow to making it go away), the sensations of your breath return to the forefront. Two big things come from this: you become more relaxed afterward, which aids task performance in most domains directly; and, you learn all these pitfalls and techniques for maintaining focus on what you choose to focus on. One big one, for instance, is that a lot of people approach focus by seeing distractions as problems to be solved (whether they are thoughts, pains, environmental sounds—whatever), but eventually you see that what works is maintaining an equanimous attitude toward distractions, and simply returning your attention to what you're doing, while understanding you might get pulled away again shortly (and it's not enough to just 'know' this; you have to practice it). Lastly, meditators are typically encouraged to practice being in this 'aware but not trying to do anything' state while doing other things than sitting, which has got to help with generalizing. (Not to mention the desired mental state is just domain agnostic to begin with. When you're doing a task you either believe you know how to do it and go at it confidently, with little meta-thought; or you're observing/critiquing how you're doing it and trying to change routines you've stored for doing it. In the first state you're way more tuned into sense data which is relevant for actually executing the task in the present moment. Meditation helps you learn to enter the first state intentionally.)