Posted: Feb 15, 2011 1:50 am
RPizzle wrote:@ Elena:
Thank you for the response. I was able to find full text for the "Cognitive Training RCT1", and have read the abstracts of the others, as well as gone over the open access article which you linked. The full text for the 2800 person RCT was very interesting. I was surprised that the training caused so much improvement. What's more, it seemed that a few booster classes were able to maintain the initial results over a two year span. However, while it appears that reasoning (74%) and speed (87%) training were able to create cognitive improvement, memory improved in only 26% of participants after training. Perhaps, this would show that memory is more difficult to improve, or that there is more permanence in age related decline compared to the other results. Overall it seems the outcomes were very positive, and that significant cognitive change can occur even in the later years.
In the full text article you linked2, I found it fascinating that elderly adults who received training were able to best a cohort of college students, albeit ones who were untrained. It would be interesting to see if these findings are replicated on a larger scale, as 32 people comprised the experimental group and 20 the control.
I think what we need to keep in mind, however, is that those studies are looking at very specific subpopulations so their generalisation to other groups is tentative. In other words, it's possible that the cognitive training and exercise didn't increase cognitive function, but simply removed some other confound which affected cognitive function originally. As I mentioned above with the analogy with the dehydrated athlete - finding that giving him water makes him run faster, does not mean that giving water to athletes will make them run faster.
We'd need to see studies on fully functional, healthy adults to see if these claims hold up.
RPizzle wrote:Looking at this study in particular though, I find a large problem with university learning. Most information and research is rather cut and dry in class.
It depends on what level of university you're at. Initially the first year or two is more or less rote learning; 'here are the facts, learn them'. Then the third year introduces skepticism and asks you to do some critical examination of the claims made in lectures; 'here are the facts, what do you think of them?'. And then once you get past third year, and into postgraduate study, you basically learn that everything you've been told in university is wrong, so it's more like, 'The world is a confused and jumbled mess and nobody really knows anything, go out there and try to discover a single fact on to which we can base an entire framework of knowledge'.
RPizzle wrote:In this study, Posit Science is providing funding, has three article authors are on their staff with investments, and the training program being used is their own. The company sells "brain training" games/programs for $350-$700 a pop. I really find it difficult to determine how skeptical I should be. Even with that being said, the results do look promising.
I think the key is to be open to the possibility, but skeptical of any big claims that seem pretty unbelievable at a glance. The idea that things we do, like staying healthy and using your brain in everyday life, can improve the function of our brain (especially in tasks that we explicitly practice) is a fairly undebatable claim, but the claim that arranging numbers in a 3X3 square will improve our memory, advance our algebra and grammatical skills is something we should be wary of..
RPizzle wrote:I would be interested to learn more about neuroplasticity, and the methods used to create cognitive improvement. I had always heard, and apparently accepted as fact, that if you didn't start learning a language or play an instrument from a young age that you were pretty much doomed to mediocrity in those areas. However, if pronounced changes are possible in elderly adults through training, then perhaps that assumption is wrong or less prominent than I had thought. Thanks again for all the thought provoking links.
Source:
1. (PDF) http://geron.psu.edu/sls/Effects_of_cog_training_02.pdf
2. http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0011537
There are some good articles on neuroplasticity, in particular these:
http://mindhacks.com/2010/07/06/neuropl ... discovery/
http://neuroskeptic.blogspot.com/2010/1 ... icity.html
They give a decent summary of what it is, and discuss some of the limitations and problems with how it's generally presented. Basically, the idea that our brain is "fixed" and that we have set structures that deal with certain functions (the modular mind) is necessarily wrong, but the extent to which it is wrong is where the problems come in. Neuroplasticity is not an amazing thing that can rebuild an entire structure in an adult brain - our flexibility decreases significantly as we get older, but as children when the brain is initially wiring itself up, it can cope with a few obstacles. The problem is when we assume that neuroplasticity is what accounts for our ability to learn, when in reality it only plays a minor role, but this belief is what leads to the ideas like the 10% myth of brain use and that we have some kind of "hidden potential" that needs to be unlocked.
In terms of language, there certainly is a "critical period" of sorts, as people not exposed to language by a certain age will fail to pick it up (although this idea is obviously based on observational studies and it's possible that there are serious confounds to this idea). With music, however, learning to play as early as possible will certainly help but it's not true that learning it later on dooms you to mediocrity. It's harder to learn (old dog, new tricks), but not impossible. So there is some flexibility in learning these things, but they have little to do with neuroplasticity.