3 thoughts on “Brain-zapping Kinect game boosts mathematical skills – New Scientist

  1. Her performance improved on the second trial, the one during which she was given brain stimulation. How do the experimenters know that her improvement was not simply due to practice? After all, we do improve our task performance when we repeat the task.

    • I agree. This is the tough question wherever cognitive enhancement is concerned. But I think a lot of researchers realize this and so will be designing very careful studies. It’s supposed to be science! We may see more tangible evidence in stroke rehab, where a person’s hand grip strength, for instance, can be objectively measured. Some of the online brain challenge sites I’m looking at use an algorithm to create the test, so it’s not really something that you could ‘get good’ at beyond becoming familiar with it. So it would be more like… running the 100 yard dash 25 times, collecting your times, and then running another 25 times using tDCS and comparing. If there was a significant benefit, it’s likely you’d see it in the results.

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