If somebody was to say that exercising improves your fitness you probably wouldn’t find many people disagreeing with them. Most people would have assumed however, that the person was talking about physical exercise and therefore physical fitness. What if they had actually meant mental exercise and thus the fitness of your brain rather than your body? Is brain power something that can be improved through exercise, or is it a simple matter of some people being born naturally smarter than others?

There are several Nintendo games that exist specifically to exercise your brain, Dr Kawashima`s Brain Training and Big Brain Academy are the first that spring to mind. Scientific studies have shown that games such as these can have a positive affect on your mental condition, which is why some neuroscientists endorse them. This is not to say that doing brain training for hours will make you a genius, but instead it means that generally your brain will be quicker and sharper. Again, the analogy with physical exercise is a good one here. Think of brain training as being like physical fitness training, all those sit-ups, press-ups and jogs don`t directly help you in your everyday life as there is not much call for them, however, they do improve your stamina so you don`t get tired so easily and your physical strength so carrying heavy objects is not such an effort. Similarly, there is little call for you to solve brain training puzzles in your everyday life, but practising them means your brain is more active so you have better concentration, are more aware and can solve life`s little problems easier.

The strongest evidence for the importance of brain training games is from studies that showed brain training games slowed mental decline in middle-aged and elderly people. Our brains get old as well as our bodies and doing mental exercises every day means we can slow that decline such that our mental prowess does not diminish as quickly with age and we stay sharp for longer. Simply put, exercising the brain improves the blood flow within it, which in turn improves its overall fitness. It doesn`t matter specifically what your brain is doing, as long as it is doing something challenging. To sustain the challenge you need to have variety in your brain training routine, so your brain doesn`t become complacent with one specific puzzle. This is where Nintendo brain training games excel, as they provide you with lots of different games, such as Sudoku, Word Memory, Head Count and Triangle Math (to name just a few). On top of this you can always do a crossword or word search in a newspaper, puzzle book, or on a website for even more variety. It`s always important to stretch yourself, but it is even more important that you enjoy your brain exercises and they don`t become a chore. Variety is a good way to ensure both of these things.