Do brain training games work? An honest look at the evidence

Brain training apps promise a sharper mind in a few minutes a day. Some have gone much further, suggesting their games could help at work, at school, or against age-related decline. So what does the research actually say?

The short answer: you will get better at the games you play. Whether that improvement spreads to the rest of your life is much less clear, and the best evidence says not much. Here is the longer answer.

Near transfer and far transfer

Researchers use two terms that make this whole debate easier to follow.

Near transfer is when practice on one task improves performance on that task, or on very similar ones. Play a number memory game for a month and you get better at number memory games.
Far transfer is when practice improves something different: general reasoning, school grades, remembering where you left your keys, coping at work.

Near transfer is easy to show and almost always happens. Far transfer is what people actually want, and it is the hard part.

The ACTIVE trial: real effects, narrow ones

The largest study in this area is ACTIVE (Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly), a randomized trial in the United States that enrolled 2,832 older adults, with an average age of about 74. Participants were assigned to training in memory, reasoning or speed of processing, or to a control group with no training. Training consisted of about ten sessions, with booster sessions for some participants later on.

The ten-year follow-up, published by George Rebok and colleagues in 2014, is often cited. What it found:

The reasoning and speed groups still performed better than controls on the specific abilities they had trained, ten years later.
The memory group no longer showed an advantage on memory tests.
All three trained groups reported less difficulty with daily activities than the control group. But on objective, performance-based tests of everyday tasks, there was no difference.
Only about 44% of the original participants were still in the study at ten years, which limits how far the results generalize.

So: durable effects on the trained skill, and mixed, mostly self-reported signals beyond it. That is a long way from “train your brain, change your life”.

The 2014 consensus letter

In October 2014, the Stanford Center on Longevity and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development published “A Consensus on the Brain Training Industry from the Scientific Community”, signed by around 70 psychologists and neuroscientists. Their main point was that the scientific literature did not support claims that brain games can reduce or reverse cognitive decline. They also criticized marketing that played on older adults’ fears about aging.

The debate was not one-sided. A few months later, a group of more than 120 scientists, some of them involved in cognitive training research, signed an open letter replying that certain training programs did have documented benefits. The disagreement itself told you something: the evidence was not strong enough to settle the question.

The 2016 review by Simons and colleagues

In 2016, Daniel Simons and six co-authors published a long review in Psychological Science in the Public Interest titled “Do ‘Brain-Training’ Programs Work?”. They examined more than 130 studies, including those that brain training companies cited on their own websites.

Their conclusions:

There was extensive evidence that training improves performance on the trained tasks.
There was less evidence for improvement on closely related tasks, and little evidence for improvement on distantly related tasks or in everyday cognitive performance.
Many studies had design problems, such as small samples, weak control groups or many outcomes measured without correction.

In plain words: people improve at what they practice, and the claims of broad benefits were not well supported.

The FTC and Lumosity

In January 2016, the US Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement with Lumos Labs, the company behind Lumosity. The FTC alleged that the company had advertised, without adequate scientific support, that its games could improve performance at work and at school and reduce or delay age-related cognitive decline. The settlement included a $50 million judgment, suspended once the company paid $2 million, and required that future claims of this kind be backed by competent and reliable scientific evidence.

The case became a reference point for the whole industry. It is the reason careful apps, including ours, avoid medical or intelligence claims.

So are brain games pointless?

Not at all, as long as you see them for what they are. Things they can honestly offer:

Practice on specific skills. If you want to get quicker at mental arithmetic, practicing mental arithmetic helps. Our article on mental math tricks shows a few methods worth drilling.
A small daily habit. A few minutes of focused play can be a pleasant break from scrolling, and it is easy to keep up.
Feedback. Seeing your scores change over weeks is satisfying and shows you where you are slower or less accurate.
Fun. That is a perfectly good reason on its own.

What they should not be expected to do: raise your general intelligence, replace sleep, exercise or learning real skills, or protect against any disease.

How we approach it

We built Esprio with this in mind. It offers short games in memory, logic, math, attention, speed and words, with a daily session of three games picked where your scores are weakest. The goal is a small, enjoyable routine and progress on the games themselves, not promises about your brain.

The bottom line

Brain games make you better at brain games. This is well established.
Effects on unrelated tasks and everyday life are weak or unproven.
Be wary of any app that claims to raise your IQ, help with a medical condition or prevent decline.
If you enjoy them, play them. If your goal is a specific skill, practice that skill directly.