Chuan Zhang Instructor: Elizabeth Caruso English 1102 30 April 2013

Memo: I found an on website about the brain training. I choose it because Im very interested about any opinion of it. My opinion is that it is very useful for intelligent and mental health. All the recourses I found until now say brain training is good and effective; and we should use it to practice and improve the brain. But the author has adverse ideas from mine. This is really worth to consider. My purpose is writing a letter to the author and talk about our different opinions. Although I intend to write this letter just for the author, anyone could read it who is interested in brain training. The author made some good points; but I still insist my opinion for now, because there are many evidences I found already to support my opinion.

Article: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1983306,00.html

CAP Project Mr. Harrell: My name is Chuan Zhang, an audience of your article. Im a same person as you who is interested in brain training. I just read your article which title is: Study: Brain Exercises Dont Improve Cognition and it was published on the health and family part of the Time Magazine by April 20, 2010. This article has very clear opinion about the brain training. It is really reasonable after the first time I read it. You used many conclusions from some experts, and the results of experiments as the evidences. Although it is a good article for the audience, I have some different opinions from yours after careful consideration. I think the brain training is very useful. I have some explanations for the examples in your article about why those methods are not working. The problems are the time and aspects of training. Id like to talk about it with you in my letter. According to your article, you said the brain training is not working. In the second part of your article, you provided evidence about some groups train the brain in three different aspects. The conclusion is that the effect is not good; peoples brain is just stronger than before in that aspect which is trained: But the improvement had nothing to do with the interim brain-training, says study co-author Jessica Grahn of the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, Mass. Grahn says the results confirm what she and other neuroscientists have long suspected: people who practice a certain mental task for instance, remembering a series of numbers in sequence, a popular brainteaser

used by many video games improve dramatically on that task, but the improvement does not carry over to cognitive function in general. (Indeed, all the study participants improved in the tasks they were given; even the control group got better at looking up answers to obscure questions.) (Works Cited NO.1) I think this point is right without any questions, but there is a condition you didn t consider, which makes your conclusion is not completely right. The brain is a whole; every aspect will affect each other. You cannot just pick one aspect to train and give up all the others. If you just pick one aspect to train, it must be improved only in this aspect. If you just pick one single aspect to train, the result will be simplex that is obviously. Imagine you have a physical training on the muscle of your arm, the muscle of you leg will not be stronger. It is the same theory as the brain training. You cannot expect the integral promotion by the training of one aspect. Although we cannot practice the brain overall, we can still pick some different ways which is helpful to train the certain aspects of brain. For example, if I want to practice my memory, most people must think we just need to read more things and pay more effort to remember something; but I think we have more things to do than that. We cannot just put our attention on the problem which we are doing, we should extend our view to some other aspects. Try to watch a problem from different directions is a very good option, in order to solve the problem better. Back to the problem of how to improve the memory; I will not just practice my ability of memory, I will try to practice my logical thinking. We can still use the problem of how to improve the memory as an example for this theory. If I want to train my memory, I will not only practice the

ability of memory, but also try to practice my logical thinking at same time. I think many people maybe feel unreasonable about this idea, let me explain it. I found the logical thinking is very helpful for remember things. If I have many things need to do during a week, it is very easy to forget someone, if I put all the things together. The best way is arranging these things into a reasonable sequence and different types. Try to separate them as different types, such as the most important thing, normal or unimportant matter. Remember the amount of each type; and then, you just need to accomplish them one by one by accounting. You wont miss any one. In addition, the right time schedule is important also. If you will be very busy in a period, you may forget something easily. So try to arrange the most important thing in your leisure time, which will make sure you wont forget it and have enough time for it. This is just an example for how logical thinking help people to remember things better, which I figure it out by myself according to my own experience. I also have an example of similar opinion from another people, which believes that the brain is a whole: Perhaps you've been exploring the value of brain training for someone in your family. Even if they have one particular symptom that is most troubling for example, if reading comprehension is low but they seem normal in other areas, that doesn't mean that the other areas are not being affected. They may have come up with ways of "working around" mental weaknesses. But when school, or the job, gets more difficult, their work-around may break down. (Works Cited NO.10)

This opinion also shows that all the aspects of brain could affect each other; even you dont realize sometime. All the aspects of brain could affect each other, no matter when we are learning something or affected by something. There are some skills maybe we cannot learn from one place. We need to try more ways in order to find out the truly best way and some other methods might be helpful. Another important thing is the training of brain needs a process; the effect will not appear immediately just after the training. I saw some methods to train the brain on the website, which declare that the effect will appear very soon. You just need to spend weeks on the brain training, even days; and your brain will be improved very much. I think these kinds of example of brain training just like the examples in your article. Although the people use the brain training for a few weeks and even months, I still think the time is not long enough. Here is an article about how the brain accepts things from outside; and there are some words could help me to explain: It is said that it takes at least 21-30 days to form a habit. This is fairly accurate on a neurological basis as new neural patterns begin to form only after theyve been repeated enough times. They continue to strengthen with further repetition. Repetition converts one lane pathways into 6-lane neural highways making travel along the pathway as simple auto-pilot driving. (Works Cited NO.8) This paragraph explained that the brain need a process to build a habit, and it is the way of how brain works. The brain needs a period to repeat something over and over again, in order to be familiar with it; and then improve this aspect. I have another example which has the similar opinion:

So far we have looked at the different types of memory. Let us now look at the Memory Process and explore how sensory memory, short-term memory and long-term memory work together to create our memories. Have you ever moved house or transferred your possessions to storage? What does it involve? The memory process (also called the anatomy of a memory) can be explained by taking the example of moving house-hold inventory to long-term storage. (Works Cited NO.9) The memory has different three levels, and it needs enough time to transfer one by one. We can know that the brain always needs enough time on any new things. It must be familiar with something first, and then it can be improved. That is the reason why the brain needs a long term training, in order to improve it. I have experience about it, I think the brain training is a long term action, no matter which way you used. Lets talk about one of my own experiences as another example. When I was in high school, remember the word is the most important part of learning English. So how to remember the English word as soon as possible became very important at that time, which made us to recite words and read articles every day. We can just use this example as memory training. I didnt realize any improvement at the beginning; but I kept doing it almost a year, and I found my ability of memory was improved very much at last. I could just remember 20 words and didnt forget when the second day; this amount was increased to 40, even 50 a year later. I think it is an effect after long term practice of brain; much less I didnt use any special method of brain training at that time. How about if I used some good ways of brain

training for a long term process? I think the effect must be much better. This is just an evidence to show that the time is a very important factor for brain training. The brain will be not improved just after weeks or months; it needs more time, continuous and systematic training, in order to improve it thoroughly. The brain training is a very interesting activity. I dont think we can decide it is useful or useless directly by some simple experiments. The brain is the most mysterious part of the human. It has almost infinite potential and waits us to develop. I think the brain training is a good way to reach this target. Although every method of brain training maybe is not working for everybody, it indeed has the function to improve the brain in some aspects. What we need to do is just finding out the most suitable way for us.

Works Cited 1. Eben Harrell. Study: Brain Exercises Don't Improve Cognition The Time Magazine Tuesday, Apr. 20, 2010 http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1983306,00.html

2. http://www.neuronation.com/index.php

3. How to Improve Your Memory

http://www.braintraining101.com/how-to-improve-your-memory/

4. Efficiency of Brain Training http://www.happy-neuron.com/brain-and-training/why-train-your-brain

5. Brain Training 101 http://www.braintraining101.com/

6. Brain Training: Remarkable Capability http://www.learningrx.com/brain-training.htm

7. http://www.braintrain.com/

8. 5 strategies to effectively use your plastic brain http://www.braintraining4all.com/posts/neuroscience-says/5-strategies-to-effe ctively-use-your-plastic-brain/123/

9. Memory Process: How Do We Encode Our Memories? http://www.braintraining4all.com/posts/neuroscience-says/memory-process-h ow-do-we-encode-our-memories/283/

10. Whole Brain Training: How it affects YOU http://www.learningrx.com/whole-brain-training-faq.htm