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Do Brain Games Improve Mental Health?
Lately, brain games have become more widely used and opted for since they claim to provide various advantages that people, such as sharpened memories and concentration, as well as better mental health. These are available for download as applications, websites, and software and are sold to the consumer as ways to exercise and improve the brain. But how efficient they are, in fact? This article questions the capability of brain games to increase mental health and considers the work of such sites as the Human Benchmark of cognitive training.
Understanding Brain Games
Cognitive programs are games that are either computer or paper based with the intention of exercising the brain. Common goals include behavioural objectives that relate to specific skills like problem solving, pattern recognition, spatial visualization as well as short term memory skills. These are established puzzles like Sudoku, crossword puzzles, and applications that are designed with this features such as Lumosity, CogniFit and Peak. The premise is simple: similar to how going to the gym improves physical body and its respective muscles, the mind can also be improved and exercised to perform better.
Mental health, the condition of the individual’s psychological, emotional and social personality, can therefore be described to have a direct correlation with cognitive function. Stress, lack of concentration and deterioration of cognitive ability in elderly people may cause or worsen mental diseases, including anxiety or depression. Particularly supporters of the Internet games claim that such anti-aging practice could partly solve these problems, as the routine exercise boosts the brain’s concentration, memory, and logical thinking capacities.
The Evidence: Do Brain Games Work?
The use of brain games is particularly popular, but its effectiveness is still not fully discussed in scientific literature. Some research indicates that cognitive training can bring about changes not only when it concerns certain skills. For example, if the games developed for the purposes of improving the working memory were to be played, that may improve tasks related to it. Nevertheless, Critics state that such a change remains, for the most part, unrelated to other aspects of mental health or daily life experience.
Cognitive Gains and Mental Health
Some studies show that engaging in mentally stimulating activities can:
Delay cognitive decline
It is still feasible to eliminate brain diseases like dementia by constantly using our brains through games.
Improve mood and reduce stress
Solving puzzles or getting high scores within games triggers the emission of dopamine, the pleasurable neurotransmitter hormone.
Enhance focus and mindfulness
Skills that involve keeping attention for an extended duration tend to enable professionals to focus, hence reducing anxiety.
The Role of Platforms like Human Benchmark
Human Benchmark is an online site developed with the aim of testing and improving the individual’s thinking skills. These are games and test areas dealing with reaction time, memory, word, and pattern tasks. It is playable, with users monitoring performance over time and competition with others in the platform, making it competitive cognitive self-enhancement.
Popular Tests on Human Benchmark
Reaction Time
Reflects decision-making speed regarding the visual input and may be used to evaluate the neural conduction rate.
Memory Sequence
This one challenges the short-term memory of the users by making them remember and reproduce sequences of numbers or Colors.
Typing Test
Used for evaluating verbal skills and Hand-Eye coordination.
Visual Attention
Tests your capacity to target more than one subject at a time.
These tests have a short feedback mechanism, which encourages the users to come back and do a better job. As mentioned before, Human Benchmark is not a mental health self-assessment tool. Still, it indirectly helps individuals improve their mental health as they engage in something that challenges their brains as well as helps them pay attention to themselves.
Benefits of Using Human Benchmark
These tests have a short feedback mechanism, which encourages the users to come back and do a better job. As mentioned before, Human Benchmark is not a mental health self-assessment tool. Still, it indirectly helps individuals improve their mental health as they engage in something that challenges their brains as well as helps them pay attention to themselves.
Engagement
It is easy to practice with such tools over and over due to their entertaining strategy.
Self-Tracking
It enables the users to track the progress being made and create achievement orientation.
Accessibility
People can benefit from set cognitive training with little amount of effort and most importantly, it has no cost.
It’s possible to find shortcomings when using any brain game platform, including Human Benchmark. Its tests are most useful for the measurement of a specific skill rather than the overall health of the mind. However, this platform does not purport to cure or prevent mental illnesses either.
Bridging the Gap between Cognitive Training and Mental Health
To maximize the mental health benefits of brain games, experts recommend integrating them into a broader strategy:
Diverse Activities
Integrate brain training with other activities that challenge the brain, such as reading, learning a new skill or engaging in any art.
Physical Exercise
Even the simplest forms of aerobic workouts have been scientifically proven to improve one’s mental and cognitive health.
Social Interaction
Group games of any kind are a great way to help reduce isolationism and are beneficial when someone is alone.
Mindfulness Practices
Others, such as relaxation, strengthen the aspect of cognitive training because they help in focusing and reducing stress.
Realistic Expectations
Although the practice of brain-training games, in particular, may be consumed as an entertaining task, they can in no way be an effective remedy for mental issues. Some of the guidelines include having realistic expectations, according to the American Psychological Association and other experts. On its own, brain games won’t do much to cure anxiety, depression or any other severe illnesses. But they can be useful as part of an individual’s overall mental health therapy strategy.
In the case of such platforms as Human Benchmark, extrinsic benefits are not relevant since the main purpose of their work in the context of the given hypothesis is to provide a self-estimation and to develop cognitive abilities. Citizens should engage such tools not as a way of fixing more general psychological problems but as means to gain insight into the functioning of mental faculties.
Conclusion
Computer game websites such as Human Benchmark offer a useful method of entertainment as well as a means of determining whether the brain is working at its optimal capacity. There is some controversy regarding the direct effect of art on mental health; however, concerning the aspects of mental engagement and self-reflection, there can be no doubt. According to the study, the brain games are well incorporated with exercise, interaction, and mindfulness.
Last of all, this problem can be solved only comprehensively. Thus, brain games are best considered a piece of the picture rather than a complete solution.