PresentTense: We know the world has turned a little topsy-turvy when even computer game consoles encourage physical exertion. Previously they could be trusted to exercise only the muscles that regulate dribbling. So, in a week when it feels wise to camp out on the couch and let the backwash of the year ebb over you, it is good to hear of a game in which winning depends on doing as little as possible.
In Mindball, two players don headbands, but are not expected to break into a sweat. Instead they face off across a table and try to push a little ball into the opponent's goal using only brain power. Winning is dependent on calmness under pressure, so it's helpful if that brain power is running on standby. Electrodes attached to a player's head read alpha and theta brain waves: electromagnetic oscillations of the brain that get their kicks when you are kicking back.
Therefore, Mindball rewards tranquillity. It costs €15,000, so if you're still tranquil after that credit card bill thumps into your mailbox then you're a potential world champion.
They have a game rigged up at the Wired store in New York. Slate magazine sent a journalist along to play and watch. He left not only with an undefeated record but a suspicion that the game needs a little re-wiring.
The equipment is unreliable, meaning that the flutter of an eyelid can affect the readings. He noted how, due to some quirk or other, nine out of 10 people sitting on the left won their matches.
"Even a trained meditator with fingers flexed in mudra poses couldn't catch a break," he observed. "He got his butt kicked over and over by a distractible six-year-old."
Mindball could work, he concluded, given the right conditions, the right equipment and a qualified technician on hand to glue the game to your cranium.
"It's not a very good product," a shop assistant admitted. "I wouldn't buy one."
It hasn't dissuaded a handful of institutions. The US military academy at West Point, for instance, has bought one as an aid to developing grace under pressure. And science museums across the US and Canada employ it as an interactive exhibit, available for any distractible six-year-old who wants to kick the butt of a passing Buddhist monk.
In fact, the British Science Museum has just spent the past few days using Mindball to look for "the most relaxed mind in Britain".
Which seems a somewhat elaborate way of finding such a person. During school holidays, the Science Museum is surely over-run with kids, hopped up on sugar and interactivity. Walk onto the main concourse any day at 4pm and find an adult who isn't crankier than a bag of cats: that's the most relaxed mind in Britain.
Mindball, though, may be riding the crest of a particular brainwave.
A trend is developing towards "gyms" for the brain as much as for the body. As the baby-boomer generation reaches retirement age, it is realising that, while it has developed the technology to keep the flesh relatively fresh, the mind has a disappointing tendency to give up the fight.
There is no point in buffing up the bodywork if the engine sputters to a halt miles before the finishing line.
The New York Times reports that health insurers are offering courses in "maintaining the brain".
Retirement homes are engaging in programmes to stave off the brain drain. Web sites such as Happy Neuron offer subscriptions for "brain callisthenics", daily tests to keep the mind in tip-top condition.
In the US, there's a steady trade in such books as Dental Floss for the Mind and Keep Your Brain Alive. In Asia, the enticingly titled Right Brain Paradise is a big hit as a mobile phone game.
The science on this remains uncertain, although a study of 2,800 American over-65s claims that those given 10 memory, reasoning or cognitive tasks were five years later found to have declined less in that particular skill than others. It's the mental equivalent of doing 10 sets of dumbbells in 2001 and expecting the biceps to be still rippling in 2006. However, many studies have been done on already mentally fit patients. And the anecdotal benefits of doing the Simplex crossword on a daily basis have yet to be matched with the continuing ability to do everyday tasks, such as finding the right change to buy the paper in the first place.
But the supermarket aisle marked "elixir of youth" has always been a crowded one. And as an alternative to Mindball, there is Nintendo's Dr Kawashima's Brain Training, a computer game that uses maths problems and quizzes to rate the player's "brain age". It's considered good to have a brain age in the early 20s.
Any younger, presumably, and the mind will only do complex mathematics if it involves getting a packet of fags and four bottles of blue WKD out of a tenner.
