What Brain Training Can and Cannot Do

Brain-training apps are often advertised as a gym for the mind: a few minutes a day, and you will think faster, remember more and stay sharp for years. We make a brain-training app ourselves, so we think you deserve a straight answer about what the research supports. The short version: training reliably makes you better at what you train. Whether that improvement spreads to other tasks and to everyday life is much less certain.

Near and far transfer

Researchers distinguish between two kinds of benefit.

• Near transfer means getting better at tasks very similar to the one you practised. If you train a particular memory game, you may also improve on a slightly different version of it.
• Far transfer means improvement in different abilities or in real life: remembering names at a party, concentrating at work, reasoning better in general.

Brain-training marketing usually promises far transfer. The evidence mostly shows the first kind.

What large studies found

In 2010, Adrian Owen and colleagues ran an online study with thousands of participants who trained for six weeks on tasks of reasoning, memory, planning and attention. People clearly improved on the tasks they practised. But on separate tests of general abilities, they did no better than a control group that spent the same time answering general knowledge questions online.

A thorough review published in 2016 by Daniel Simons and six colleagues examined the studies that brain-training companies themselves cited as evidence. The authors found extensive evidence that training improves performance on the trained tasks, less evidence for improvement on closely related tasks, and little evidence that training improves everyday cognitive performance. Many studies also had design problems, such as small samples or weak control groups.

A meta-analysis of working memory training by Monica Melby-Lervåg and Charles Hulme came to a similar conclusion: short-term improvements on similar tasks, but no convincing evidence of lasting benefits for broader abilities like reading or arithmetic.

The ACTIVE trial: an interesting, careful finding

One study is often mentioned in discussions about cognitive training, and it deserves a careful description. ACTIVE was a large randomised trial in the United States involving nearly 2,800 older adults. Participants received about ten sessions of one of three types of training, memory, reasoning, or speed of processing, or were assigned to a control group. Some received additional "booster" sessions later.

Each type of training improved the specific ability it targeted. Ten years later, the reasoning and speed-of-processing groups still did better than the control group on the abilities they had trained, while the memory group's advantage in memory tests had faded. Participants in all three training groups also reported less difficulty with everyday activities than the control group, although this was based on self-report.

In 2017, Jerri Edwards and colleagues analysed the ten-year data and reported that participants in the speed-of-processing group, which trained a task of quickly noticing and locating objects on a screen, had a lower risk of being diagnosed with dementia over that period than the control group. The memory and reasoning groups did not show a clear difference.

How should this be understood? It is an observed association in one trial, found in an analysis of follow-up data. The diagnosis was not the main question the trial was designed to answer, and the result has not yet been confirmed by independent trials. It is an interesting lead for further research, not proof that any exercise protects the brain, and certainly not a promise that Fokusnyk or any other app can do so.

What brain training can realistically offer

So is there any point? We think so, as long as expectations are honest.

• A skill you can see improving. Getting better at a clearly measured task is motivating, and the progress is real, even if it is specific.
• A snapshot of your current state. Your results on simple tasks like reaction time reflect sleep, fatigue and stress. That can be useful feedback.
• A short, focused habit. A few minutes of concentrated effort without switching is valuable practice in a distracted day.
• Enjoyment. It is a perfectly good reason in itself.

What brain training does not replace: sleep, physical activity, social contact, and learning real skills that you actually want, such as a language, an instrument, or a subject you care about. If you want to get better at something specific in life, practising that thing directly is usually the best training there is.

What to try

Start with the Reaction exercise in Fokusnyk and treat it as both a measurement and a practice. Track your results over a few weeks and notice what makes them better or worse. You will become better at the exercise itself; what it tells you about your sleep and your focus may turn out to be even more useful.

Sources

• Owen, A. M., et al. (2010). Putting brain training to the test. Nature, 465(7299), 775–778. doi:10.1038/nature09042
• Simons, D. J., Boot, W. R., Charness, N., Gathercole, S. E., Chabris, C. F., Hambrick, D. Z., & Stine-Morrow, E. A. L. (2016). Do "brain-training" programs work? Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 17(3), 103–186. doi:10.1177/1529100616661983
• Melby-Lervåg, M., & Hulme, C. (2013). Is working memory training effective? A meta-analytic review. Developmental Psychology, 49(2), 270–291.
• Ball, K., et al. (2002). Effects of cognitive training interventions with older adults: A randomized controlled trial. JAMA, 288(18), 2271–2281.
• Rebok, G. W., et al. (2014). Ten-year effects of the ACTIVE cognitive training trial on cognition and everyday functioning in older adults. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 62(1), 16–24.
• Edwards, J. D., Xu, H., Clark, D. O., Guey, L. T., Ross, L. A., & Unverzagt, F. W. (2017). Speed of processing training results in lower risk of dementia. Alzheimer's & Dementia: Translational Research & Clinical Interventions, 3(4), 603–611. doi:10.1016/j.trci.2017.09.002