Poker and scrabble are not only fun; they sharp our minds too. "Games—really fun, captivating games—are the mental counterpart of physical exertion," explains Gene Cohen, a 54-year-old game inventor and geriatric psychiatrist. "If you work up a mental sweat doing something that is also fun, you keep the psyche agile because you've tingled your brain cells in a way they won't forget. The cells actually thicken and grow as you learn."

Wired for novelty

There was a time in the United States—less than a generation ago—when games weren't just for kids. Before we owned home-entertainment centers, we had game cabinets. Before there were couch potatoes, there were kibitzers. Instead of "Must See TV" night, we had Scrabble evenings.

Today Americans watch 30 to 50 hours of television every week. If, on top of that time drain, you add exhausting commutes and longer working hours and the deepening devotion to home computers and the Internet, it is easy to see how our so-called leisure time has been fractured.

Still, there are anachronisms among us—the corporate lawyer who sneaks off to play backgammon at lunch, the longtime pals who arrange joint vacations around bridge tournaments.

Different games yield different experiences. The deep lateral thinkers pop out of the pack in strategy games; the jokers and wits come to the fore during lighter games；the diplomats take the stage in games of negotiation. And always, the weaker players learn from the stronger.

Cohen believes it is this coupling of rapt enthusiasm and learning that builds intellectual and psychological muscle. We are wired to best respond to novelty. The fresher the stimulus, the more engaged you are, the more impact it has on you, the more likely you are to remember it. Great games are fresh every time you play.

Staying sharp

Some of the earliest evidence that play can influence intellect came from neuroanatomist Marian Diamond. In the 1960s Diamond and fellow researchers at the University of California at Berkeley found that rats playing with "toys"—objects that could be sniffed, gnawed, tossed or crept through—learned to traverse mazes better than rats reared in Spartan cages. When Diamond checked their brains, she found that the rats treated to toys had a significantly thicker cerebral cortex—the part of the brain largely concerned with thought.

The studies showed that mental exertion boosted brainpower in rats of every age. Now researchers believe that people who challenge their minds may build reserve brainpower they can draw on, like a bank account, as they grow older. And that reserve—a luxury in youth—can be crucial in life.

Still, it is hard to believe that playing poker could keep brain cells more vigorous than watching an evening of sitcoms. Diamond is adamant on this point. In one experiment, researchers had rats play with toys, while another group watched. After several weeks, the brains of the rats who played got bigger. There was no significant change in the brains of the rats who watched. Scientific evidence suggests that games-playing also primes the mind for other sorts of learning. Stuart Margulies, a New York city psychologist, randomly selected third- and fourth-graders from New York and Los Angeles for 45 minutes of chess instruction each day. After one year the chess players outperformed the non-playing control group on reading tests.

What is the connection? Nobody knows for sure. Cohen believes that game-playing skills—being decisive, seeing patterns, improvising with incomplete information, changing strategies mid-stream—are fundamental to learning. The hundreds of little decisions that games require help you stay intellectually flexible. Game-playing reinforces the fact that it is possible to lose ground and still win.

The Awakening

What about computer game, now a big part of U.S. game market? It is attractive that you can play them by yourself. But computer games, even those online between live opponents, lack the nonverbal communication, that is a rich part of spending time with another person face to face. And these subtle rhythms of companionship are essential to health and resilience.

Cohen says the greatest test of his own resilience came in 1991, when he was wrongly told he had Lou Gehrig's disease. Suddenly confronted with what might be only a few years left to live, he wondered if he had something more to contribute. It was then that he realized his interest in game-playing was not merely academic. It was personal.

"My father worked late at his hardware store," says Cohen. "but until I went away to college, no matter how tired he was, we would always get in a few games of cribbage before bedtime. My father used cribbage to teach me number theory. Only much later did I realize the games represented a whole lot more. For the time it took to play the game, I had my father all to myself."

On the day of that epiphany, Cohen decided to turn up the fire under a hobby: inventing games. To Cohen's delight, his first effort, W-WIII, made a splash in the toy and art worlds. It was named Best Party Game of 1994-1995 by Fun and Games magazine.

So Cohen continues to educate his fellow academics about he power of games. Cohen's enthusiasm for game-playing is contagious. For him, what's missing from many adult lives isn't a sense of purpose but a sense of play.

Brain Twisters

One of today's popular games is "Mind Trap." Take the following four. The answers are as followed.

1. Six glasses are in a row, the first three full of juice, the second three empty. By moving only one glass, can you arrange them so empty and full glasses alternate?

2. You throw away the outside and cook the inside. Then you eat the outside and throw away the inside. What did you eat?

3. Why are 1,990 American dollar bills worth more than 1,989 American dollar bills?

4. Rearrange the letters in the words new door to make one word.

Answers

Pour the juice from the second glass into the fifth glass.

An ear of corn.

1,990 dollar bills are worth $1,990, while 1,989 dollar bills are worth only $1,989.

One word.

(Selected from Health, November/December 1997, written by Deborah Franklin)