Do Brain Training Apps Work? What the Evidence Actually Shows
Commercial brain training makes people better at brain training. Whether that improvement transfers to anything else is the whole question — and the answer has been consistently disappointing.
Brain training is a large industry built on an appealing premise: cognitive ability is trainable like a muscle, so practising the right exercises should improve thinking generally. The research on that premise is unusually clear, and it is not what the marketing suggests.
The transfer problem
Everything turns on a single distinction.
Near transfer means improvement on tasks closely resembling what you trained. If you practise remembering sequences of digits, you get better at remembering sequences of digits. This is well established and not in dispute.
Far transfer means improvement on genuinely different tasks — remembering names, following a conversation, managing your finances, general reasoning. This is what people actually buy brain training for.
Across the literature, near transfer is reliably found. Far transfer has been consistently weak, inconsistent or absent.
In 2014, a large group of cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists issued a public statement concluding that the evidence did not support claims that brain training products meaningfully improve everyday cognitive function or stave off decline. Subsequent reviews and meta-analyses have broadly sustained that position.
Regulatory action
This has not been purely an academic dispute. In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission has taken enforcement action against brain training companies over advertising claims regarding cognitive benefits and protection against age-related decline, including a settlement with Lumos Labs, maker of Lumosity, in 2016 involving a substantial financial judgment.
The regulatory issue was not that the games do nothing. It was that claims about real-world cognitive benefit outran the evidence.
Why improvement feels real anyway
Users of these products often report genuine subjective improvement, and several explanations account for that without far transfer:
- You are getting better at the game. Score improvement is real and reflects task-specific learning.
- Expectation effects. People who believe an intervention will help often report and sometimes demonstrate improvement on the measures used. Many early studies lacked adequate active control groups to separate this out.
- Attention to the domain. Someone using a memory app is generally also thinking more about memory, using strategies, and paying more attention. That produces real benefits, attributed to the app.
What has better evidence
If the goal is cognitive health, the interventions with stronger support are unglamorous and mostly not sold as products:
- Regular aerobic exercise, which has the most consistent evidence of any intervention
- Adequate, unfragmented sleep, including treating sleep apnoea
- Management of cardiovascular risk factors — blood pressure, glucose, lipids
- Correcting hearing loss, which is a recognised modifiable risk factor
- Sustained social engagement
- Genuinely new and demanding learning — a language, an instrument, a complex skill
- Not smoking, and moderating alcohol
The nuance worth keeping
Some structured cognitive training programmes, particularly those targeting processing speed in older adults, have shown more promising results than commercial games in specific trials. Those findings are real, more specific than general “brain training” claims, and still debated regarding how far the benefits extend and how long they last.
There is also nothing wrong with playing these games. They are engaging, and engagement is not worthless. The problem is the pricing and positioning — paying a subscription in the belief that it protects against dementia is buying something the evidence does not support.
A useful test
When any product claims cognitive benefit, ask what it was compared against. A study showing improvement versus doing nothing tells you very little. A study showing improvement versus an equally engaging control activity, on tasks unlike the training, is the one that matters — and those are much rarer.
This article is general educational information, not medical advice. It cannot account for your medical history, medications or symptoms. Talk to a licensed physician before changing anything about how you manage your health, and see one promptly if you are worried about your memory. Read our full medical disclaimer.