Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain? (Nintendo DS)

Does your brain feel a little out of shape? Brain Age is what you need to shape up your mental thought processes. The game is inspired by the research of Professor Ryuta Kawashima, a prominent Japanese neuroscientist. Through years of researching the effects of performing reading and mathematical exercises he has compiled simple takes that will help to stimulate the brain.

Designed to help people young and old to stay mentally sharp, Brain Age gives you quick mental tasks that will stimulate your prefrontal cortex. You’ll start off by taking a test of what your current brain is at. The ideal age to shoot for is 20. To get your brain age to the mental sharpness of a 20 year old if you’re not there yet, you’ll need to fire up the game daily to do daily training. With the use of the stylus and touch screen, or in some tests the microphone, you will go through tasks as fast as you can like solving simple math problems, memorizing the placement of objects on the screen, memorizing a list of words and having to recall as many as you can, and more. As the days go by the professor will unlock different puzzles for you to tackle to keep your gray matter as sharp as possible.

You can jump into Quick Play to show your friends and family or to just do a mental sharpening. Go into Daily Training to track your brain age, check out your progress on a graph, and do your daily training. Go to Download and you can compete against friends to see who can do math calculations the fastest.

The US and European versions include Sudoku to also keep your brain in shape.