[Y201K]

A friend showed me Lumosity and I thought "there's no way this can work", when in life do you have to distinguish the direction moving colored arrows are pointing? The reason I so quickly came to this conclusion is because of the concept of specificity in strength training -- your exercises have to be picked so that they support your goals. I imagine that an approach like this in the brain-enhancing-games space would look a lot more like what we think of as homework.

[tux1968]

What caught my eye in your post is that you have accumulated some useful knowledge from strength training that you just applied elsewhere in your life. Don't you think it's possible that the exact same could happen to people solving puzzles? I doubt that a scientific study would find that strength training leads to improved problem solving skills, and yet it has for you.

[EliRivers]

I doubt that a scientific study would find that strength training leads to improved problem solving skill

Here are some that do.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001691814...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26456233

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22155655

[tux1968]

Heh, well that'll teach me for not being more precise in my wording. Of course your fitness level will have a positive effect on your mental abilities. What i meant to highlight was his use of specific insights _about_ strength training that he then found could be abstracted and applied elsewhere. The same possibility of which he had dismissed in the puzzle solving case.

[Y201K]

I do think that collecting anecdotes from other fields can help you think better in your own field of work. I'm just not so sure that, for example, doing Sudoku makes you any better at thinking about things. Brain training exercises aren't general enough.