Mindflex Game List Price: $79.99 Sale Price: $110.00 Average Rating: [Click Here] NOTE: Price may adjust at any time.

MindFlex Toy Description

The MindFlex is a toy with a lightweight headset containing sensors for the forehead and earlobes which measures your brainwave activity. When you focus your concentration, you can make a a small foam ball rise. If you relax your thoughts, the ball will go down.

But that's not (even though it's amazing you can make a ball rise just with concentration) -- By using a combination of physical and mental coordination, you guide the ball through a customizable obstacle course. You can change the various obstacles into many different configurations.

Your telekinetic fantasies becomes a reality with the Mattel Mindflex. With the help of advanced technology, Mindflex introduces a whole new way to play--by using the power of your mind! Your kids as players, learn to alternately focus and relax their minds, the ball will respond by rising and falling.

Actual MindFlex Toy Reviews

This toy could get boring fast. The headset does get uncomfortable after about 10 minutes. So why am I recommending this toy? Because studies have shown that if you can increase frontal lobe activity through exercises like this, you can increase objective measures of concentration (e.g., amount of time engaged with a task) and decrease measures of impulsivity. And not just for the task where the skill was trained. So a child who got adept at playing this game should also pay better attention in school, likely increase their reading comprehension, do better on homework, etc.

My recommendation is that, if this is something that is interesting to you, you buy this toy for your child and that you play it with them. Set performance goals with them and give them some sort of reward for meeting and exceeding those goals. Start small At first.

But get this toy!!! In labs where they do this sort of therapy, children with ADHD have shown serious improvement in functioning. Some kids are able to get off meds altogether.

If you want to do a little extra research before purchasing, go to wikipedia and search neurofeedback. There's a good synopsis there with links to some peer-reviewed research at the bottom.

Scott Herbst, Ph.D. (in behavioral psychology)

This toy is an amazing gift and will definitely blow you off your feet with disbelief. It is some amazing engineering and it will be a lot of surprise for kids and even for many adults. You can be innovative and design many plans and games out of this kit. [There are a lot of small components and you can easily lose them, not suitable for small kids under 5 years]. There is no multi player mode, you have to take turns to play with the sensors. It will be awesome if you have a lot of people to watch you move the ball through the rings. As a single player you could get bored after an hour or even less.

This game can bring in some amazing new thoughts in to a child's mind and springs new ideas from the child. If your kid is in school and is amazed by science, this toy can have a lot of impact.

This game was featured at comicon in San Diego this summer. The kids did not have time to stand in line to try it although they really wanted to try it. Since I buy a game each year for them, it seemed the perfect gift.