I set up a member login and learn that a session includes four games with instructions, plus a practice run so I’m not lost once the game proper starts. That’s just as well: as a journalist I work with a computer all day, but I’m no gamer.
In fact, it takes me a while to work out how far away from the screen I should sit, and how to co-ordinate yes/no responses, arrow keys and answers I have to type in. (Numbers? I’ve never had to travel up that end of the keyboard before.)
I’m curious to know whether my lack of gaming skills will drag down my scores, so I enlist the help of Professor Con Stough, director of the Brain Sciences Institute at Melbourne’s Swinburne University of Technology. “Anyone accustomed to computers will do much better at first,” Stough tells me. “But as the ‘practice effect’ kicks in, anyone else will catch up.”
After seven attempts at a game, Lumosity calculates my “brain performance index”. My poorest score, 240, is on Monster Garden. Here, beasties of different colours pop up on a grid of squares, then disappear. I have to find a path through the grid without stepping on them. I should have known spatial memory wasn’t my thing. We’re talking about someone who spends 20 minutes trying to find his car at Westfield.
I achieve my highest score (870) on Raindrops, doing sums against the clock. I’ve always been a little fanatical about mental arithmetic – counting kilojoules, adding up my shopping, calculating pay rates. I think this has helped, and neuroscience agrees.
Several decades ago, the consensus was that much of the brain was fixed in our teens. Now scientists embrace the concept of neuroplasticity, meaning that many areas of the brain function better with regular use. It takes deliberate effort, however, as the brain, in its infinite laziness, always tries to find an easy way out. I know I can’t remember people’s names. Do I work on it? Not really. Do I get around it by calling them “Mate” and “Champ”? You bet.
Halfway through the course, I find my results are mixed, so I call neuro-scientist Michael Scanlon, co-founder of Lumos Labs. “Gains are often non-linear,” he warns. “It’s like playing a sport or learning an instrument. There are periods of progress and periods where you plateau.”
My one big triumph is in the game Birdwatching, where a bird and a letter flash on a landscape simultaneously. I have to show where the bird was and identify the letter. I can feel this might help my peripheral vision, but Stough is less sure.
“I have reservations about being able to improve split attention a lot, particularly in terms of generalising to everyday activities,” he tells me.
