In September of 2008, Haile Gebrselassie set a new world record for the marathon of 2 hours 3 minutes and 59 seconds; he improved on his own previous world best by 27 seconds. An amazing achievement. Between 1952 and 1954, James Peters of the United Kingdom set no less than four world best marathon times reducing his time by more than 3 minutes. But his best time of 2 hours 17 minutes and 40 seconds in 1954 would have left him trailing Gebrselassie by almost three miles. This doesn't detract from Peters' considerable achievements in distance running, but it does indicate how much more we know today about the ways and means of physical training and conditioning.

The concept and application of physical training that brought about such huge improvements in the sports world provides a useful analogy for the kind of revolution that's happening today in the world of brain science and mental health. Overturning many decades of misplaced pessimism about the possibility of improving brain function, a mountain of new research shows that the brain can change and grow throughout our lives. Everything from math scores to Alzheimer symptoms have been found to benefit from brain fitness training. Scientists have even proven that fluid intelligence, long since thought fixed and immutable, can be increased with the right kind of brain exercise.

These studies, for instance, came out in just the past few months:

Test Scores Improve with Brain Games

Scottish educators had 600 children in 32 schools use a brain game for twenty minutes per day over a ten week period. Compared to children who hadn't been using the brain game, the students improved their scores on a post test by more than 50%.

New brain fitness program to fight memory loss

After a two year study, the Alzheimer's Association of Australia has given its endorsement to a brain training program that showed processing speed, attention, and memory improvement in controlled trials.

Memory Training Shown to Turn Up Brain Power

In the spring of 2008 university researchers published a study showing that demanding training of the brain's short-term memory produced increases in fluid intelligence of more than 40% in less than 20 days.

The Many Benefits of Brain Training

Sadly, once we're out of school and established in a career, most of us don't stretch our brains the way we used to. And this means we're facing a long slow decline in mental function. That's the bad news. The good news is that scientists have proven that with the right kind of exercise we can stimulate new cell growth and positive change in the brain at any stage in life, stemming or even reversing this decline. If we want to keep the brain growing, it's not enough to turn our mind to familiar tasks. New cell growth and new brain maps require focused attention and fairly intensive mental exercises. But the benefits are well worth it.

Academic Success & Learning

The child's brain is necessarily plastic, as children absorb and process the wealth of information they need in order to function in the world. Further stimulation with the right kind of brain training enhances a child's ability to focus and learn, a perfect supplement to traditional classroom education. For teenagers and adults in higher education, brain training looks set to become another tool that can be used to achieve their best scores on the omnipresent standardized tests. Of course, brain training has an added advantage in that it transfers these improvements into the next course of study.

While it's become an accepted practice to help children with learning dysfunctions by providing workarounds or accommodations for a child's particular weakness, some pioneering learning specialists (such as Barbara Arrowsmith Young, founder of the Arrowsmith School in Canada) have begun to tackle the dysfunctions head on with brain training. By targeting and strengthening the particular brain function that is underdeveloped, it is possible to reduce or eliminate the dysfunction altogether.

Work and Personal Growth

It is unfortunate and ironic that the modern workplace produces a work environment that is detrimental to brain health and mental fitness. With conference calls, dozens of e-mails, endless meetings, instant messages, chronic multi-tasking, and shortening deadlines the office worker must forever divide his attention and deal with habitual stress - two prime candidates for preventing new neural growth and brain plasticity. Without some form of focused, mindful brain exercise, we're in danger of reducing our cognitive ability when we most need it. By taking time out to engage in brain training that demands complete focus and builds working-memory, processing speed, and left-brain right-brain interaction we can become much happier in our day to day lives and much more effective in the workplace.

Brain training can also bring about changes in areas that we would not initially imagine it could. Users of brain fitness programs regularly report improved self-esteem, improved hand-eye coordination and increased self perception. But since the brain directs all aspects of thinking and feeling these findings are perhaps not at all surprising. By incorporating brain training into our schedule of self-improvement activities we can derive considerable value and satisfaction from this new self-improvement tool.

Brain Maintenance and Mental Health

The UCSF Memory and Aging Center reports that for each decade past the age of forty-five we lose about 10% of our cognitive capacity. Joe Verghese, M.D. (New England Journal of Medicine, volume=348, issue=25, 2003) found that people can reduce their risk of developing Alzheimer's symptoms by 64% by adding a brain exercise to their weekly schedule. He also showed that people who engage in brain exercise four times a week have a 47% lower risk of dementia than those who do so just once a week. Senior centers around the country have begun to introduce brain training programs. But clearly if we want to avoid mental decline we should begin to engage in regular mental exercise much sooner, while we're in our thirties or early forties.

And as if these weren't sufficient reasons to run out and invest in a good brain training tool, scientists have also linked new cell growth with the efficacy of antidepressants and reduction in the stress that can lead to depression. Brain training then also promises the ideal conditions to help counter and mitigate depression.