The increase in human life expectancy has awakened people's attention to the urge for a more functional life in old age. The great appeal of the many brain training programs is not just to maximize kids' intellectual capabilities. They might also be useful for elderly folks seeking to potentialize their mental processes and mainly recover their tuned memory, for example. Amid so many announced promises, some scientists have been striving to seriously investigate it.
It is a fact that many people, foreseeing their own future, might be inquisitive about the efficiency of such methods. However, to get the knowledge, we have to engage in programs, buy books, having classes, etc. The amount of information flooding the internet with this subject matter must probably lead many people to wonder if it worth paying the price.
The basic objective to apply such methods is to enhance brain functionality. Therefore it is expected that these gains could be measured to prove the veracity of the positive results that these brain training programs propose. The many ways to register and measure brain activity have shown that it is not an easy task. The brain has a diversity of circuits connected by different areas. Due to its complexity, the development of advanced technologies to measure its functioning became highly necessary across the years.
The most usual adopted methods to measure brain activity are non-invasive ways like EEG (electroencephalography) and fMRI ( functional magnetic resonance imaging). Although they cannot measure a single neuron activity, both methods can be practically used to record neural activity in the brain areas. The EEG registers the communication processes between neurons, the electrical activity happening in the brain through the macro electrodes attached to people's scalp capable of detecting a huge number of postsynaptic potentials around each electrode's area.
On the other hand, fMRI produces a clearer picture of those activities, describing the extent of a particular function's area and mapping the brain structure according to its potential to develop so many processes. It applies an indirect method of measuring based on the amount of blood flowing in different brain areas, which confirms the massive demand for Oxygen in many brain activities. Although both approaches have limitations in detecting a single neuron performance, they are widely used to verify brain activities through a diversity of neuroscientific researches.
This is a very strong entry. My primary suggestion would be to emphasize fMRI over EEG. As you mention, they have relative strengths and weaknesses. However, given that the claim being assessed is that these apps activate specific regions, spatial resolution seems more important than temporal resolution.
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