As with most other folks in my situation, I did a quick search on Google about these so called “brain fitness programs“. Let me be clear: I was a skeptic. After all, I was taught in school (I happen to be a biology student in college) that what happens to your brain, including memory loss and your IQ, is largely determined by genetics. In other words, there’s nothing you can do to save your brain if it is degenerating (except with the use of synthetic drugs to delay the inevitable).

Thinking back, it was foolish to believe what my professors… after all, the technology at the time didn’t allow for such claims to be made. We had no machines, no MRI or PET scan. What we knew about the brain back then was purely based on the observation of the reaction of whatever we were testing. We can’t see what exactly happened in the brain.

But it’s different now.

Today, we can see what the brain is doing in real-time. Today, we can see how a particular brain is different today from one week ago.

Modern technology has allowed us to observe the different indicators of neurological health. Did it grow new neurons in this time frame? Did it lose some? Did establish new synapses? What sort of hormone is it secreting? If so, how much and how frequent?

And because of such technological breakthroughs, a slew of scientific research on the brain and its functions popped up in the last decade or so. In fact, in that period of time, we learn more about the brain than the past millennium combined! And all that new knowledge seem to confirm one fact and one fact only: That what we knew about that thing that sits in the middle of your two ears is WRONG.

The Birth of Brain Fitness Programs

That means it’s not all about nature – nurture do play a part. What you do everyday physically affects your brain. I can write a book about how daily activities influences brain growth but I will not bore you with the details. Here’s what you need to know: Your brain is just like your muscles: If you want it to grow, you have to challenge it. If you’re not growing, you don’t stay the same. The natural process of aging will make sure you degenerate.

Your brain is just like your muscles: If you want it to grow, you have to challenge it. If you’re not growing, you don’t stay the same. The natural process of aging will make sure you degenerate.

That discovery spurred the boom of an industry that is brain fitness programs. We all know that when there’s demand, enterprising souls will come along to supply it. That’s happened here, thus if you do a quick Google search on “brain fitness programs”, you’ll find more than a dozen options.

How do you know which one to choose?

That was my question when I was looking for a program to stick to. It was a tricky question to answer because, well, no one (at the time of this writing) has done any sort of testing and comparison of all the programs out there. There are two reasons for this:

1. Brain improvements are often subtle. Coming up with ways to reliably measure this change is, in itself, a tough challenge.
2. Improvements often take a period of time – sometimes years to take effect. It would thus requires lots of financial backing to undertake such a project.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t use your own common sense to eliminate some options. Here’s the checklist that I go through:

1. Are there any sort of scientific study that was conducted to test its effectiveness? If so, does the study consist of a double blind study and has it been replicated with different subjects? (If you cannot access the study, safely assume it’s fictitious.)
2. Look through the testimonials. Are their clients using words such as “feeling better” or “experience improvement”? Feeling is obviously extremely subjective and the experienced improvement can, in fact, be due to cognitive dissonance.
3. What does qualified third party reviews say about it?
4. Take their free trials. Is it fun? If it is, safely assume it’s a waste of time because it is not supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to challenge your mental capacity and whenever there’s a challenge it’s never fun. You’ll fail at most of the “games” presented in the program at your first dozens of tries before you get them right and trust me, that’s not fun.
5. Does the program offer money back guarantee? If the creators are confident the program will work for you, shouldn’t they also offer money back guarantee?

Now, if you go through all the things in the list, you’ll probably come down to two to three choices. I frankly don’t know which of them are the best but I ended up choosing Posit Science due to this article in Scientific American. I don’t have any way to objectively measure my improvements but I do know none of the people close to me ever mentioned my forgetfulness again.