Do Brain Training Games Work? What the Evidence Shows
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Quick answer
Brain training games work, in the narrowest possible sense: you get better at the games. What has never been convincingly demonstrated is that the improvement goes anywhere else. In the largest controlled trial ever run, 11,430 people trained for six weeks, improved on every task they practised, and showed no transfer to anything they had not. In 2016 the makers of Lumosity paid the Federal Trade Commission $2 million over what they had claimed.
The only question that matters: transfer
Nobody disputes that practising a task improves performance on that task. The entire scientific argument concerns whether the improvement travels.
| Type | Meaning | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Task-specific gain | You get better at the exact game you played | Overwhelming. Uncontroversial. |
| Near transfer | You improve on tasks that closely resemble the trained one | Real but limited, and it fades with dissimilarity. |
| Far transfer | Your general reasoning, memory or intelligence improves | Not convincingly demonstrated. |
What the advertising implies
Every brain-training claim about being sharper at work, better at school, or protected against decline is a far-transfer claim. Every well-replicated finding in the field is a task-specific or near-transfer finding. The gap between those two sentences is the entire industry.
The largest trial ever run
In 2010 Adrian Owen and colleagues, working with the BBC, ran brain training at a scale no laboratory could match. Some 52,617 people registered. Of those, 11,430 completed the protocol: benchmark cognitive testing, six weeks of online training on one of several regimes, and benchmark testing again.
Although improvements were observed in every one of the cognitive tasks that were trained, no evidence was found for transfer effects to untrained tasks, even when those tasks were cognitively closely related.— Owen et al. (2010), Nature
Read the last clause again. Not merely no transfer to general intelligence — no transfer even to tasks that were cognitively closely related to the training. The gains stayed inside the exercises that produced them.
Simons and colleagues later conducted an exhaustive review of the field for Psychological Science in the Public Interest, examining the evidence cited by the brain-training companies themselves. They found extensive evidence of improvement on trained tasks, less evidence of near transfer, and little evidence that training produces the broad cognitive or everyday benefits that are advertised.
Working memory explained — the capacity most brain-training products claim to expand.The n-back story, in miniature
The modern brain-training industry has an origin, and it is a single 2008 paper.
Jaeggi and colleagues reported that training on a demanding working-memory task — the dual n-back — produced gains in fluid intelligence that scaled with the amount of training. It was a striking result, because fluid reasoning was widely believed to be resistant to training, and it was taken up rapidly.
Redick and colleagues attempted a more rigorously controlled replication in 2013, with an active control group and multiple measures of each ability. They found no evidence that dual n-back training improved fluid intelligence. Melby-Lervåg, Redick and Hulme's meta-analytic review reached the same conclusion across the broader literature: no convincing evidence of far transfer.
The methodological detail that explains the divergence
Many early studies used a passive control group — people who did nothing. If your control group does nothing and your training group is told they are improving their intelligence, the training group will improve on a post-test for reasons that have nothing to do with cognition. Studies using an active control, doing something equally engaging, tend not to find far transfer.
What the regulator found
In January 2016 the US Federal Trade Commission settled deceptive-advertising charges against Lumos Labs, maker of Lumosity, then the most prominent brain-training product in the world.
The FTC's position was not that brain training is worthless. It was that the company had made specific claims it could not support: that training would improve performance at school, at work and in athletics; that it would delay age-related cognitive decline and protect against mild cognitive impairment, dementia and Alzheimer's disease; that it would reduce impairment associated with stroke, traumatic brain injury, PTSD, ADHD and the side effects of chemotherapy — and that scientific studies proved all of it.
| Element | Outcome |
|---|---|
| Judgment entered | $50 million |
| Paid | $2 million, the remainder suspended on financial condition |
| Required going forward | Human clinical testing before making broad cognition claims |
| Additional charge | Failure to disclose that some testimonials were solicited via prize contests |
The detail worth remembering
Some of the glowing consumer testimonials on Lumosity's site had been obtained through competitions offering a free iPad, a lifetime subscription and a trip to San Francisco. That was not disclosed. When you next read a brain-training success story, this is the base rate you are working against.
The FTC's summary of the case was that Lumosity preyed on consumers' fears about age-related cognitive decline and simply did not have the science to back up its advertising.
What does have evidence behind it
The absence of evidence for brain games is not an argument that nothing helps. It is an argument that the things which help are less profitable to sell.
- Education. Ritchie and Tucker-Drob's meta-analysis of more than 600,000 participants found roughly one to five IQ points gained per additional year of schooling. This is the best-evidenced cognitive intervention that exists.
- Treating what is suppressing your performance. Sleep deprivation, untreated depression and anxiety, uncorrected hearing and vision problems, and some medications all depress cognitive test scores. Fixing them raises scores that were being held down.
- Physical exercise and cardiovascular health. The effects on cognition are modest and the literature is mixed, but it is better supported than brain games and it has substantial benefits regardless.
- Learning something genuinely difficult and new. Not because it raises your IQ — the evidence does not support that — but because crystallized ability is the half of intelligence that grows for as long as you keep feeding it.
- Spatial training, if a spatial skill is what you want. Uttal's meta-analysis of 217 studies found durable gains that generalised to untrained spatial tasks. That is real within-domain transfer — see spatial reasoning — and it is still not far transfer to general intelligence.
An honest summary
You cannot buy fluid intelligence. You can accumulate knowledge and skill indefinitely, and you can stop doing the things that are suppressing the ability you already have. Neither makes a good app.
Myths and facts about brain training
| Myth | Fact |
|---|---|
| Brain training games make you smarter | They make you better at the games. In the 11,430-person Owen trial, no transfer appeared even to closely related untrained tasks. |
| Dual n-back raises fluid intelligence | The 2008 finding did not survive a controlled replication with an active control group, and meta-analysis finds no far transfer. |
| Brain games protect against dementia | The FTC fined Lumosity's maker in 2016 for exactly this claim, finding it unsupported by the science. |
| Thousands of users report real benefits | Some of Lumosity's testimonials were solicited through contests offering prizes, undisclosed. |
| There is no evidence anything improves cognition | Education reliably raises measured intelligence — one to five IQ points per additional year of schooling. |
| Scientific studies prove brain training works | They demonstrate task-specific gains. Every advertised benefit is a far-transfer claim, and far transfer is what has not been shown. |
Frequently asked questions
Do brain training games actually work?+
They reliably improve your performance on the games themselves. What has not been convincingly demonstrated is transfer to anything else. In the largest trial ever run, Owen and colleagues (2010) trained 11,430 people over six weeks and found improvement on every trained task and no transfer to untrained tasks, even cognitively closely related ones.
What is the difference between near transfer and far transfer?+
Near transfer is improvement on tasks closely resembling the one you trained. Far transfer is improvement in general ability — reasoning, memory, intelligence — measured on tasks that share no surface features with the training. Near transfer is real but limited. Far transfer is what brain-training products advertise, and it is what the evidence does not support.
Did Lumosity get fined?+
Yes. In January 2016 Lumos Labs settled Federal Trade Commission charges of deceptive advertising. A $50 million judgment was entered and suspended after the company paid $2 million, and it was required to obtain human clinical testing before making broad cognition claims in future.
What did the FTC say Lumosity claimed?+
That training would improve performance at school, work and in athletics; delay age-related cognitive decline and protect against mild cognitive impairment, dementia and Alzheimer's disease; reduce impairment associated with stroke, traumatic brain injury, PTSD, ADHD and chemotherapy side effects; and that scientific studies proved these benefits. The FTC found the company did not have the science to support the advertising.
Does dual n-back training increase IQ?+
A 2008 study by Jaeggi and colleagues reported that it did, and it launched the modern brain-training industry. Redick and colleagues' more rigorously controlled replication in 2013, using an active control group, found no such effect, and meta-analytic reviews of working-memory training have found no convincing evidence of transfer to intelligence.
Why do some brain training studies show positive results?+
A common reason is the use of a passive control group that does nothing. If the training group is told the exercises will make them smarter and the control group does nothing at all, the training group will improve on a post-test for reasons unrelated to cognition. Studies employing an active control group, doing something equally engaging, generally do not find far transfer.
What actually improves cognitive ability?+
Education has the best evidence: Ritchie and Tucker-Drob's meta-analysis of over 600,000 participants found gains of roughly one to five IQ points per additional year of schooling. Beyond that, removing what suppresses performance — sleep deprivation, untreated depression or anxiety, uncorrected hearing and vision problems — raises scores that were being held down.
Are brain training games a waste of money?+
They are an effective way to become good at brain training games, and some people enjoy them, which is a reasonable thing to pay for. They are not supported as a way to become more intelligent, to perform better at work or school, or to protect against dementia, and a regulator has already penalised a company for saying otherwise.
Sources
This guide draws on standard psychometric references and peer-reviewed research:
- 1.Owen, A. M., Hampshire, A., Grahn, J. A., et al. (2010). “Putting brain training to the test.” Nature, 465(7299), 775–778.
- 2.Simons, D. J., Boot, W. R., Charness, N., et al. (2016). “Do ‘brain-training’ programs work?” Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 17(3), 103–186.
- 3.Melby-Lervåg, M., Redick, T. S., & Hulme, C. (2016). “Working memory training does not improve performance on measures of intelligence or other measures of ‘far transfer’: Evidence from a meta-analytic review.” Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(4).
- 4.Federal Trade Commission (2016). Lumosity to Pay $2 Million to Settle FTC Deceptive Advertising Charges for Its “Brain Training” Program.
- 5.Jaeggi, S. M., et al. (2008). “Improving fluid intelligence with training on working memory.” PNAS, 105(19).
- 6.Redick, T. S., et al. (2013). “No evidence of intelligence improvement after working memory training.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 142(2).
- 7.Ritchie, S. J., & Tucker-Drob, E. M. (2018). “How much does education improve intelligence? A meta-analysis.” Psychological Science, 29(8), 1358–1369.
- 8.Deary, I. J. (2020). Intelligence: A Very Short Introduction (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.
- 9.American Psychological Association (APA)
Sources are provided for further reading. Organization links point to official sites; academic works are cited in full. See our research standards and editorial team.
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