Like a step-class for your brain. (Actibrain Free Brain Training (actibrain.com)

Member Name: jojoegypt2008

Product:	Actibrain Free Brain Training (actibrain.com
Date:	07/05/09 (113 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Free, easy to understand, addictive, educational

Disadvantages: You might never do anything else

You may have seen the (nauseating) tv ads for Brain Training games you can play on a Nintendo DS? Well, they always seemed like a good idea to me, but lacking a Nintendo of any sort (unless my old SNES in the garage counts?), I've always thought it was one of those things I'd like to do, but couldn't afford. Like organic veggies.

Until.... I found (through Money Saving Expert), this website.

What is it?
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Actibrain.com is a free website, providing daily workouts, tests and fun games to play which are supposed to increase your brain power. These 'cognitive exercises' (as they call them), exercise your brain, keeping it working.

Once you've registered (easy, all you need is an email address, and a username which you make up), you can get started straight away.

There are five categories in which to try the puzzles: Verbal, Numerical, Memory, Logical and Spatial.

You can try the Daily Workout, which gives you two exercises in each category, and which you can play as much as you like. Once that's done, you can do a Daily Test, which picks five games and tests you on them. The games on this vary from day to day, but are drawn from the overall ten games (2 in each category).

Once you've played each game, it gives you your score, based on how long it took you to complete, and how accurate you were. Your daily score (on the Test) is recorded in a bar chart, showing your progress, which is a nice way to check if you are actually getting better/smarter, or just wasting time!

What else is there on Actibrain?
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There is advice on brain health, including diet and exercise pointers, widgets and gadgets for things like your Vista sidebar, and iGoogle page/mySpace page - these are not only a link to the website (and thus free advertising), but a way to display your score to the world. Should you wish to...

There is also Actibrain for schools, offering this service to schools and colleges (for a fee).

Actibrain offer a range of pc based games you can buy, based on the same idea - from about £15, and of course, including a lot more games than those available free online.

So....Does it work?
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Well, I'm no cognitive scientist-type, but it certainly works, if only as a placebo, for me. I log in almost every day, and I like seeing my score progress from level to level (you can progress certain games to one level, and then have to catch up with other games, which is motivating), and hoping one day to appear on the leaderboard!

Some games I really look forward to - Wordwise, for example, is a bit like Blockbusters (I'll have a p please Bob.... titter), but you have to make words out of connecting letters. I'm not such a fan of the numerical games, but they are good - I'm just not a maths person.

All in all
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It's free, it's fun, and it might even make you smarter. What's not to love?
They even have good customer service - I emailed to say that I couldn't use the 24hr clock format to enter 00:40 (for example), as it would enter 04:00 and mark me wrong, and they replied in 24 hours to explain and promised to fix it.
It is (as far as I can tell) American - the Word games reflect this a little bit, but it's not off-putting.
I should also say, I am well aware that brain training is probably a load of old hokum, but nonetheless, I enjoy it and it makes me feel more alert. And the world needs more lerts.

Give it a whirl!

Summary: Chuck away your Nintendo DS, and train your brain for free!