Playing Games, The Brain and Learning To Dance

Playing cards—unlike most people, I realize it's a mindless activity. On the other hand, I continue to hear people say that games are an important part of ensuring brain health. Some promoters of the idea even argue that the strategies developed and employed to win are a valuable exercise of brain power, and grow one's capacity. But I'm not buying it. Playing with friends while you wait out the rain or pass the time in the evening without watching TV is just not a competitive setting, and is not calling forth any extraordinary effort from the brain. We forget to keep score or certain people "table talk" so conspicuously you can only laugh when they still lose the hand.

On a distantly related front, this week brought another story from Europe somewhere about the possible benefit of dancing to people with neurological disorders like Parkinson's. It seems there is a new study attempting to replicate some promising early results that indicate Irish set dancing can ward off certain effects on gait and balance. This is not the first time dancing has emerged as an effective therapy in such cases. It has something to do with the fact that dancing is a learned skill and is not strictly controlled by the same motor neurons that control unconscious movement like walking usually is. Luckily, not enough information has emerged to reach my bride's antennae, which seem to tune in any reason at all to compel me to take dancing lessons with her.

But back to playing cards (before she looks over my shoulder and sees an opening to point out the dance situation), what does it mean when the person who is playing the game for the first time scores more than double the nearest competitor? Two possibilities come to mind. One is that no one is paying as much attention as the neophyte is. Thus, the neophyte, who is concentrating, is outplaying all the other players who are not paying any attention at all. That's probably not an exceptional process of development taking place in his brain; at least the score doesn't prove anything that we can see. He still couldn't remember the names of the people he was telling us a story about. He didn't get smarter, he just made better game decisions, because he had to think about what he was doing each step of the way. The rest of us, on the other hand, continued to play without thinking. Sorta like life. We sleepwalk through it.

Then, there's the second possibility—his success was just the luck of the draw. The game takes no particular skill. The outcome is a product of dumb blind luck. So, tell me again how games develop the brain?

Now my yoga teacher tells me we spend too much time in our heads and not in our bodies. She would say these card games are just another way we lose that connection. We should be doing something else, an activity that gets us active, moving around like—uh-oh, don't tell my wife—we'll be taking dancing lessons before I know what hit me.