It's an attractive idea: By playing online problem-solving, matching and other games for a few minutes a day, people can improve such mental abilities as reasoning, verbal skills and memory. But whether these brain training games deliver on those promises is up for debate.

A research team gathered more than eight thousand volunteers globally after collecting their submission of an online questionnaire about their training habits and which, if any, programs they used. Some one thousand participants reported using brain training programs for about eight months, on average, though durations ranged from two weeks to more than five years. Next, the volunteers completed 12 cognitive (认知) tests assessing their mental abilities. They faced specially designed memory exercises, such as mentally rotating objects, pattern-finding puzzles and strategy challenges.

When looking at the results, researchers saw that brain trainers on average had no mental edge. Even among the most dedicated, who had used training programs for at least 18 months, brain training didn't boost thinking abilities above the level of people who didn't use the programs. Participants who had trained for less than a month, also performed on par with people who didn't train at all.

"No matter how we sliced the data, we were unable to find any evidence that brain training games were connected with cognitive abilities," says leader of the team. That held true whether the team analyzed participants by age, program used, education or socioeconomic status – all were cognitively similar to the group who didn't use the programs, suggesting that brain training games don't live up to its name. Accordingly, the study advocates no more time sitting at a computer and doing little tasks.

Summer Programs are available to students upon application. Please consult individual course descriptions for restrictions and requirements. 

Intensive Beginning Swahili

Intensive Beginning Swahili is a summer abroad course for students who have no prior proficiency （熟练）in the Swahili language. The course is taught in Swahili and focuses on acquiring beginner-level skills to perform basic communication functions in the culture of Swahili speakers. 

Open to current first year undergraduates, sophomores（大学二年级学生）and juniors. 

Dates:25 June-20 August

Intermediate Chinese

This course is a four-week summer intensive language course, conducted in person at Princeton Theological Seminary. Students work on developing a strong foundation for modern spoken and written Chinese, with emphasis on the reading of contemporary Chinese dialogue. 

Enrollment by application or interview. 

Dates: 10 July-6 August

Studies in Spanish Language and Style

This is an intensive, full immersion（沉浸） course in Spanish language and Argentine history， culture and art. Students develop advanced language skills while studying language in context, through the exploration of the city of Buenos Aires, its architecture, museums, and cultural and political life. 

Open to students who have completed the Spanish language requirement. 

Dates:18 July-20 August

Accelerated Summer Study

Taught at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, Italy, the course will be team-taught by a resident Princeton faculty and an SNS faculty member. The course is designed to increase students' writing and speaking language proficiency levels and enable students to understand Italian culture, history and literature while exploring the foreign city. Not open to Seniors. 

Dates:24 July-24 August

There have been a few times in my life when I felt very lonely. I particularly remember my loneliness when I moved to New York City. I had a couple of friends in the city, still, it was a tune in my life when I needed to put forth some effort to form more meaningful relation-ships. But the more I went out to parties, the more disconnected and lonely I felt. Feeling lonely in a room full of people, or in my case, a whole city packed with people everywhere, was the loneliest I have ever felt.

  So, rather than trying a new way to make friends, I was more likely to ignore phone calls from friends, and I looked at social invitations and opportunities to meet new people as drudgery(苦差事). Looking back on this period of loneliness,/I wonder at the way I isolated(孤立) myself instead of reaching out to those who were willing to keep me company and offer friendship.

  What I have learned from my own experience and the experience of many of my friends is that more often than not, those who feel lonely choose isolation. Indeed, many of my own friends describe avoiding social life as a way of dealing with feelings of loneliness.

  This behavior is somewhat common, and new research takes a big step towards explaining this behavior. According to leading experts on the loneliness, Stephanie and John Cacioppo, there is an evolutionary explanation for this tendency to isolate when we are feeling lonely. By monitoring lonely people's brainwaves, they found that lonely people tend to respond negatively to social life. "Loneliness causes some brain-related changes that put us into a socially nervous mode," Dr. Christian Jarrett explains.

  Making ourselves aware of this evolutionary natural tendency could actually be the first step in fighting loneliness. Once we know that we are more sensitive to negativity during lonely spells, we can focus our energy on resisting the desire to put up walls.