Brain Training Software Fails Key Scientific Test

Last year the BBC in collaboaration with leading neuroscientists conducted a large-scale scientific test of brain training software. They wanted to answer the question – does brain training software work?

The study recruited over 11,000 healthy adults of all ages and had them train their brains using software 3 times per week for 6 weeks.  The results were negative.

Those that did the brain training showed no cognitive improvement  beyond what you get from surfing the internet for the same period of time.

Scores on the tests provided by the brain training software did improve but none of that translated into better cognitive performance on tasks outside the software.  This held up for a wide range of cognitive activities including reasoning, planning, problem-solving, short-term memory, attention, visual spatial processing and mathematics.

This is a landmark study that calls the relative effectiveness of brain trainig software into question. To quote the study:

The results are truly amazing. The Brain Test Britain study found no evidence that the benefits of playing brain training games transfer to other brain skills. (However, the results do suggest that further research into brain trainers aged 60 and over is required. Dr Adrian Owen (pictured to the right) said: “The result is crystal clear. Brain training is only as good as spending six weeks using the internet. There is no meaningful difference.”

You can review the findings, look at the details behind the work and even play the games that were used for the training at UK Lab. They are continuing the study with participants that are 60 years and older.

I am interested to hear from readers that do regular software-based braining training exercises. What do you think of this study? Will it change your brain training routine?