A scientfic study on popular brain training applications

In a six-week study, funded by the BBC, experts found people who played online games designed to improve their cognitive skills didn’t get any smarter.

Researchers recruited participants from viewers of the BBC’s science show “Bang Goes the Theory.” The largest ever ‘brain training’ study, recruited 11,430 people, aged 18 to 60. They were asked to play online brain games designed by the researchers to improve their memory, reasoning and other skills for at least 10 minutes a day, three times a week. These brain games are typical of the types of games offered by companies such as Nintendo and Lumosity.

Results showed clearly that while players got progressively better at the games, the gains did not transfer to general intelligence, the journal Nature reports.

Players gained nothing in terms of general reasoning, memory, planning or visuospatial abilities, experts found. Tests before and after the training showed none of the interventions boosted people’s ability to do everyday thinking tasks, although they did get better at playing the individual games and the specific cognitive tasks these involved.

Dr Adrian Owen, a neuroscientist at the Medical Research Council, said:

The results are clear. Statistically, there are no significant differences between the improvements seen in participants who played our brain training games, and those who just went on the internet for the same length of time.

Leading game maker Nintendo said their Dr Kawashima brain training games did not claim to be scientifically proven to improve cognitive function. In a statement Nintendo stated:

In this way it is like a workout for the brain and the challenges in the game can help stimulate the player’s brain.

 

Why does HighIQPro work, while other brain training apps do not?

The brain training software works by exercising your ‘working memory’ -a short term memory system used to hold in mind a few items of information for a brief time and process this information in order to reason and solve problems while ignoring distracting information. There are different working memory stores for spatial and verbal information. We use working memory when we reason, plan and problem solve. With HighIQPro you train both your spatial and verbal working memory, and as you increase your working memory capacity, your intelligence improves. Other brain training exercises do not target working memory mechanisms like HighIQPro software does.

This doesn’t happen overnight. It takes 20 days of training, 25-30 minutes a day – a level of commitment much higher than in the BBC study, and a level of commitment higher than is needed for other commercial brain training exercises on the market.

Most brain training in the large brain training industry is designed to be low-effort, fun and brief. But this latest study, published in Nature, demonstrates this kind of brain training – although it feels like it has a benefit – in fact has no impact on your ‘brain power’ or intelligence. Improving your intelligence takes some work! HighIQPro  is designed to not only target the right cognitive mechanism (working memory) to be effective, but also provide enough training time to be effective. Both components to effective brain training are essential. The scientific evidence is reviewed here.