If you were born between 1946 and 1964, do you know what you're doing right now? You're worrying about your brain, and more specifically, how to recapture those brain cells that have been lost to aging or, at the least, how to keep them from dying. Since there are nearly 80 million baby boomers in the United States, that's a lot of gray matter in distress! If you're like me, you've read all about exercising your brain, so you make it a point to work on the New York Times crossword puzzle or play Sudoku or volunteer at the nearby children's center. You're keeping yourself busy and active because you want to keep that brain of yours in good working order.

Perhaps it's this huge audience of Boomers out there worried about their fading mental acuity that propelled Nintendo to develop Brain Age for its Nintendo DS handheld console. Officially called Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day, Nintendo proclaims this "a fun, rewarding form of entertainment everyone can enjoy, as it helps players flex their mental muscles." The game is based on the research of neuroscientist, Dr. Ryuta Kawashima, who actually has a strong presence in the game and its sequel Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day although he does not take any royalties from the sale of either. Dr. Kawashima studied the importance of reading and mathematical exercises on the brain. If these exercises were performed on a daily basis, he wondered if they would stimulate the brain and thus keep it young. He said, "The more you use the brain in a challenging way, the better it can work. We know that the mental processes of our brain start to weaken if we only use it in our routine daily life."

So, based on Dr. Kawashima's theory, Nintendo created Brain Age, which consists of "Training Programs" that should be done daily to keep the brain exercising and to slow the effects of aging. Anyone who has played Brain Age is familiar with its 20-minute program of exercises. They are quick, mental activities, such as counting the number of people going into a house or reading classic literature aloud or doing basic math calculations. As Nintendo says, Brain Age will "help work your brain and increase blood flow to the prefrontal cortex...Brain Age acts like a treadmill for the mind!"

Dr. Elizabeth Zelinski, the Rita & Edward Polusky Chair in Education & Aging at the University of Southern California's School of Gerontology, is quoted by Nintendo as saying, "Americans can do a great deal to maintain and even improve their mental abilities. Aging is about taking on new challenges for our minds. Nintendo's Brain Age is a great way to do that." Other research confirms the theory that "mental acuity may be strengthened, like muscles, with brain exercises."

Either Nintendo designed a great game or its marketing strategies are excellent or there are a lot of worried Boomers out there. Brain Age and Brain Age 2 have sold over 17 million copies! And, since the introduction of Brain Age, there have been a proliferation of copycat brain exercise games sold to this worried demographic.

But, does Brain Age work? Does it sharpen mental acuity? Does it improve one's memory? Does it, in fact, boost the brain?

According to a French researcher, the answer is a resounding no. Earlier this year, the Times of London reported on a study by Alain Lieury, a professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Rennes. Lieury tested "edutainment" games (such as Brain Age and Big Brain Academy) on a group of 10-year-old children. The subjects were split into four separate groups: the first two completed a memory course on the Nintendo DS over seven weeks; the third did similar puzzles with old-fashioned pen and paper; the fourth did nothing except attend school as usual.

Lieury's research showed that the two groups that used the Nintendo DS showed no appreciable improvement in the memory tests. This group improved its math skills by 19%, but so did the old-fashioned pen-and-paper group. In fact, the fourth group, which did nothing except go to school, improved its math skills by 18%.

Some criticized the study because it ran the tests on children rather than on adults, which is the demographic these games were designed for. But, Lieury defended his test group by saying, "That's the age where you have the best chance of improvement. If it doesn't work on children, it won't work on adults."

Dr. Lieury is not the only one to discount the effectiveness of these brain exercise games. Everyday Psychology reports that in a large study of older adults without dementia, the use of games such as Brain Age did not improve daily functioning but it did slow decline. It also points out that brain training of a specific mental activity may improve that specific skill (for instance, doing Sudoku improves your Sudoku skills), but this kind of brain training does not necessarily cross over into other real-life benefits.

Sandra Aamodt, editor of Nature Neuroscience, and Sam Wang, associate professor of molecular biology and neuroscience at Princeton, contend that "the belief that any single brain exercise program late in life can act as a quick fix for general mental function is almost entirely faith-based." Their suggestion is to engage in physical exercise, which improves "executive function," described as "the set of abilities that allows you to select behavior that's appropriate to the situation, inhibit inappropriate behavior and focus on the job at hand in spite of distractions." Executive function also includes basic functions like working memory.

Their research indicates that executive function does begin to decline in the 70s. But, those who have been athletic all their lives have stronger executive function than non-exercising people of the same age. Exercise is also an important component for reducing the risk of dementia. Those who exercise regularly during their middle years are a third as likely to get Alzheimer's when they reach their 70s as those who do not exercise.

While these various research studies on brain exercising may have struck a blow to Nintendo and baby boomers alike, Dr. Lieury concludes that there's nothing wrong with playing these games. In other words, while you may not improve your brain function, you won't kill any brain cells. But, it's probably best to put the game down and go outside for a nice, brisk walk.