Hands holding a tablet showing a simple game of coloured shapes, on a kitchen table beside a cup of tea
AI-generated image, not a photograph of a real person or place.
doodlesnoodle

USE YOUR NOODLE

Better at the game,
not the rest of life.

11,430 people in one big test

  • Practice improves the task
  • Transfer is the question
  • Everyday gains are unproven
  • Train what you want to get better at

Practise a puzzle and you will get better at that puzzle.

The hope behind brain training is transfer: that practising one mental task improves others. In a six-week study of 11,430 people, players improved on every task they trained, but barely changed on the tests that mattered.

Updated

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THE SHORT ANSWER

Gains are real,
but narrow.

Scientists separate the task you practise from everything else.
The evidence is strong for the first and weak for the second.

THE BIG TEST

Six weeks, 11,430 people

BBC viewers trained online for six weeks. They improved on the trained tasks, but on wider tests did no better than a group answering general knowledge questions.

See the numbers

THE REVIEW

Remembering cards

A review of studies cited by brain-training firms found people improve on the tasks they practise, but little evidence of broader, real-world benefits.

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TIME WELL SPENT

Think about what it replaces

Experts convened by Stanford and the Max Planck Institute suggest weighing an hour of drills against an hour of hiking, learning a language or cooking something new.

What to do instead

A QUICK CLAIM CHECK

Will practising this
make you better at that?

Pick a claim. The bar shows how strongly the research supports it.

Claim check

Choose a claim
You will get better at the game you practiseWell supported

In the 11,430-person study, both training groups showed substantial improvements on every task they trained.

Gains spread to similar lab testsSometimes

The 2014 consensus says training gains sometimes extend to other cognitive tasks in the lab; in some studies they last, in others they fade.

Memory games will boost your memory span3/100 of a digit

After six weeks, memory trainees could recall three hundredths of a digit more. The control group, with no memory training, gained two tenths.

It will help with names and daily tasksLittle evidence

The 2016 review found little evidence of real-world benefits, and few studies measured everyday tasks at all.

Spacing and self-testing help you learnDecades of evidence

A commentary on the 2016 review highlights elaborating on material, repeated testing and spaced studying as evidence-based ways to improve memory.

Sources: Owen et al., Putting brain training to the test, Nature 2010 (PMC); Association for Psychological Science and University of Illinois on Simons et al., Psychological Science in the Public Interest 2016; Stanford Center on Longevity consensus, October 2014.

Based on Owen and colleagues (Nature, 2010), Simons and colleagues (2016) and the 2014 Stanford and Max Planck consensus.

TWO NUMBERS WORTH KNOWING

Tiny transfer,
thin evidence.

One figure from the largest online test,
one from a review of the research firms cite.

≈ 4 years

Training needed for one extra remembered digit

Trainees gained three hundredths of a digit in six weeks. If gains kept up at that rate, the authors calculated it would take almost four years of training to remember one extra digit.

MEMORY SPAN · OWEN ET AL., 2010

132

Journal articles cited by brain-training proponents, reviewed

Problems included small samples, the same study reported in several papers, weak control groups, and tests of abstract lab tasks rather than real-world performance.

THE EVIDENCE BASE · SIMONS ET AL., 2016

In the 2010 study, the number of training sessions made a negligible difference to scores on the broader tests, even though it was strongly linked to improvement on the training tasks themselves.

FOUR WAYS TO USE YOUR NOODLE

Practise the thing
you want to improve.

Hands laying out rows of face-down playing cards on a table for a memory game
AI-generated image, not a photograph of a real person or place.

If gains stay close to the task you practise, the useful question is what you want to get better at.

  1. Train the real skill

    Because effects tend to be task-specific, the Stanford consensus suggests training an activity that is useful in everyday life in its own right.

  2. Count the opportunity cost

    An hour of solo drills is an hour not spent walking, learning Italian or cooking a new recipe. If it replaces television, it may make more sense.

  3. Stay active and social

    The consensus group, based largely on correlational findings, recommends physically active, intellectually challenging and socially engaged lives.

  4. Study with proven methods

    For learning, elaboration, repeated self-testing and spacing out study sessions are backed by decades of research.

WHY CONTROLS MATTER

Everyone improves
the second time.

Two people walking together on a countryside path in autumn, seen from behind
AI-generated image, not a photograph of a real person or place.

In the 2010 study the control group, who simply looked up answers to obscure questions online, also improved on all four benchmark tests. A before-and-after gain on its own proves little.

That is why the 2016 review stressed active control groups that are equally engaged and expect to improve. Without them, a bigger gain in the trained group might come from differences in engagement or expectations, not the training itself.

Questions

Questions people ask

Do brain-training games make you smarter?

The evidence says they make you better at the games. A 2016 review of studies cited by the industry found little evidence of broader or real-world benefits.

What was the BBC brain training study?

Viewers of Bang Goes The Theory took part in a six-week online study. Of 52,617 people who registered, 11,430 completed it. Trained groups did no better on broad tests than a group answering general knowledge questions.

Does practising more help?

Not with transfer. In the 2010 study, the number of sessions was strongly linked to improvement on the trained tasks but made a negligible difference to the broader tests.

What do experts suggest instead?

The 2014 Stanford and Max Planck consensus recommends physically active, intellectually challenging and socially engaged lives, and training activities that are useful in their own right.

Is there anything that reliably improves memory for learning?

For studying, a commentary on the 2016 review points to elaborating on material, repeated testing and spaced studying, backed by decades of research.

Sources

Where the facts come from

  1. Owen et al., Putting brain training to the test, Nature (2010), PMC full text
  2. Stanford Center on Longevity and Max Planck Institute: A consensus on the brain training industry from the scientific community (2014)
  3. Association for Psychological Science: Brain-training claims not backed by science, report shows
  4. University of Illinois: Review finds little evidence that brain-training games yield real-world benefits

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