On Friday I had tea with Greg Niemeyer, a Berkeley art professor whose medium is games. I wanted to “gamify” the task I have been using to measure brain function. It is a letter-counting task: I see 4 letters and respond as fast as possible how many are A, B, C, or D. This takes about 600 msec — I’ve gotten a lot faster. Each session has 4 blocks of 50 trials and lasts a few minutes. From each session I get an average reaction time. I have been doing experiments to measure the effect of flaxseed oil (high in omega-3) on this task.
The task is quick, portable (requires only a laptop) and provides 200 fine-grained measurements (reaction times) per session. Flaxseed oil, I have found, not only produces long-lasting improvement in brain function (lasting weeks) but also a short-lived improvement that starts an hour or two after ingestion and lasts several hours. I developed the letter-counting task to measure the time course of the short-lived improvement. To measure the time course, I do the task every half-hour or so. The task has also turned out to be good for discovering other everyday events, such as exercise, that affect brain function. So far I have data from about 450 sessions.
It hasn’t been hard. It could be more fun. The more fun, the easier the research and the more likely other people will do it. Games are fun. Can I make the task more fun by making it more like a game? I asked Greg what makes games enjoyable. In rough order of importance (most important first), he mentioned four things:
1. The right amount of difficulty. Too easy we get bored; too difficult we get frustrated. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has made this point.
2. Lots of feedback.
3. Varying problems to solve.
4. Color and sound.
I will try adding these to the letter-counting task. I made a simple RT task with elements of #2 (feedback) and #4 (color & sound). It was much too easy but I am sure that #2 and #4 made it more pleasant.
A London Times article about medical self-experimentation.
Question: I started at 4 tablespoons of flax seed oil a day, a few months ago, and while I haven’t done any scientific self measurements, I’d say my brain is doing very well lately. I’ve gone down to about 2 and a half tablespoons in the last couple of months — do you think doing 4 has substantially greater effect than doing 2?
Tim, I think 3 is better than 2. So the answer is yes, probably.
God, that article practically sounds like a preface to an article about SLD. And one of the guys’ names was even Seth! (albeit last name…)
do you still plan to study the effects of DHA? (a gentle reminder) I’m especially interested since the oil doesn’t seem to work for me, but i’d still like the benefit of taking DHA and omega-3, but without all the calories, assume there is a benefit.
Yes, I will certainly study fish oil, including DHA. I have some in the refrigerator. But I’m giving a talk on flaxseed oil in the middle of November so it won’t be before then.