Free Republic

"We saw this area explode last year," says Mr. Fernandez. He estimates that consumers spent more than $80 million in 2008 on mental fitness. "You have an industry with tools and coaches. This is more real than people think." The industry pins its claims for brain exercise on a relatively new scientific discovery: neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to rewire itself throughout life by creating neural connections in response to mental activity. In a study published in 2006 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a clinical trial involving 2,832 older adults concluded that "cognitive training" -- such as identifying...

Man the lifeboats. The idiots are winning. Last week I watched, open-mouthed, a Newsnight piece on the spread of "Brain Gym" in British schools. I'd read about Brain Gym before - a few years back, in Ben Goldacre's excellent Bad Science column for this newspaper - but seeing it in action really twisted my rage dial. Brain Gym, y'see, is an "educational kinesiology" programme designed to improve kiddywink performance. It's essentially a series of simple exercises lumbered with names that make you want to steer a barbed wire bus into its creator's face. One manoeuvre, in which you massage the...