Brain Training Games help those with Brain Injury

Brain injury survivors from local charity, Headway East London recently took part in a research to see how brain training games can help people with memory problems.  Games of all sorts have been used as a learning tool since teaching began.  Recent advances in the sophistication and usefulness of modern Brain Training games are showing some surprising results in an especially vulnerable group – those with a brain injury. 

A recent study conducted by Linton Khor, a PhD student in the Department of Psychology at London Metropolitan University, has shown that playing a memory game for just 15 minutes on a handheld electronic device (iPhone) significantly improved their subsequent recall on a traditional memory task favoured by psychologists.  

Participants from Headway East London, were overwhelmingly favourable to the games as they perceived them as fun and engaging and stated they would continue to use such mobile memory games, as it gave them the freedom to keep working on a problem they wished to improve.  

The study involved 64 people, aged from 20 to 71, who suffer from problems with brain injury including brain damage, stroke and dementia. The volunteers were divided into two groups, one was asked to play a brain training game which tested short-term memory on a handheld electronic device 15 minutes, the other group carried out traditional word recall exercises using pen and paper. 

Linton Khor said ‘The aim of the study was to check on the usefulness, mobility and enjoyment had by playing these games – and to allow for greater exploration outside of a clinical setting, with the hope to improve brain injured patients’ independence and self-fulfilment. 'The important thing is that people really enjoyed using the games, they were fun. It's very difficult to get people with memory problems caused by head injuries or disease to stick at pen and paper tests because they're boring  -  this is a way of engaging them and it only takes 15 minutes a day.' He added: 'In recent years we have discovered the brain is like a muscle, there is the potential for new cells to grow if they are exercised.'