The brain training industry is now well-established, and most people are familiar with claims that brain fitness is akin to physical fitness—do these exercises daily and your mind will sharpen up! But is there evidence that supports these claims? Can we distinguish apps that work f rom those that do not? What criteria should we consider when evaluating the effectiveness of a brain training tool?
Brain training apps, games, and programs are marketed as tools to improve cognitive abilities for many but also to stave off cognitive decline associated with age and even degenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease. These marketing claims assume that gains after training will transfer to cognitive function more generally. That is, training your mind on a game designed to help focus your attention will enable you to control your attentional focus in tasks outside of the game as well. This assumption is so pervasive that most people do not even consider whether skills trained using a given tool will transfer to real-world situations. But before we consider the evidence testing this assumption, it is helpful to distinguish tools designed to enhance function f rom those geared toward staving off decline.
Tools targeted at people who wish to improve existing abilities generally promise to improve cognitive functioning in school, work, or activities of daily living. In the education sector, some tools are marketed as fun games for kids, and promise a “leg-up” for school-readiness and future career success. Treatments marketed to working adults often highlight increased productivity and concentration as benefits of their programs. Some programs take a more wholistic approach to general brain health and market their product as a therapy to be used in conjunction with more traditional ways of maintaining health (i.e., balanced diet, exercise).
As mentioned earlier, brain training inter ventions may also be targeted at individuals wishing to prevent decline in cognitive functioning (e.g., memory) associated with age or degenerative conditions in which age is the greatest risk factor. These interventions target common fears people hold around aging—primarily that individuals will start forgetting things,slow down, and lose mental clarity. But some go a step further, and even suggest that they can mitigate, prevent, or even reverse cognitive impairment that accompanies neurodegenerative disorders.
Many companies marketing these products make strong claims about research-driven interventions and high success rates. They might claim that working memory is vital for various cognitive functions such as focus, reasoning, learning, and resisting distractions and that their tools are scientifically proven to improve working memory and attentional focus. But do these results translate into better cognitive function in tasks of daily living?
Although many companies themselves are highly confident in their products, most researchers are not in agreement about the efficacy and translatability of brain training techniques. Over time, psychologists and neuroscientists have conducted empirical studies, reviews, and meta-analyses to evaluate the marketing claims and the efficacy of brain training. After all, the potential applications of brain training are compelling. If brief, game-like interventions designed to improve abilities and prevent decline can lead to desirable, real-world outcomes, then these training programs could be a shortcut to improving people’s lives. Additionally, they would serve a growing need, as our population grows older, and more and more people show signs of age-related neurodegenerative diseases. This article will examine the mechanisms of brain training exercises, evaluate the evidence of efficacy for several popular brain training options, and suggest directions for future research.
What Is Brain Training?
Brain training (or “cognitive training” or “mind training”) refers to activities and interventions targeted at making individuals “smarter” or preventing cognitive decline via training specific components of cognition (Katz et al. 2018). As mentioned earlier, the goals of most brain training interventions are either to enhance one’s cognitive abilities, and/or stave off the cognitive decline associated with age or age-related diseases. A person’s cognitive abilities can generally be defined as the skills required to perform tasks related to learning, memory, reasoning, language, understanding, and other abilities that are associated with how our minds function (APA Dictionary of Psychology n.d.).
Improving Abilities
We first examine brain training programs that aim to improve existing abilities. When one engages in brain training exercises, they are intended to improve different components of a person’s cognitive abilities such as executive function, attention, and working memory. Executive function is an umbrella term that describes an individual’s “higher level” cognitive abilities such as planning, problem solving, and decision making that require logical and abstract thinking (APA Dictionary of Psychology n.d.; Diamond 2012). Many brain training programs coach one aspect of executive functioning in an attempt to improve cognitive abilities more generally. For example, a participant might train their attention by practicing a series of attention tasks for several weeks, then to test improvement, complete a novel series of attention tasks. To test whether cognitive ability improves more generally, a participant may complete a battery of tests assessing working memory, attention, problem solving, and other executive function skills. This battery assesses whether training in one domain transfers to other domains of cognition and generates overall improvement.
Why do most interventions target these areas of cognition specifically? Katet al. (2018) noted the reasons why brain training might target executive function, working memory, and attention. They suggest that these abilities are necessary for higher level, complex behaviors and they are strongly correlated with valued outcomes such as higher intelligence, academic success, and positive life outcomes. So naturally, if better attention, working memory, and executive abilities lead to a plethora of desirable traits and life outcomes, people want to boost performance in these areas. When interventions attempt to train these abilities, we are asking a fundamental question about the abilities themselves: are they changeable? Will our abilities, and subsequently our life outcomes improve as a result of input and training, or are they set in stone? In a sense, these interventions tap into our desire for the fountain of youth and our drive to continue to improve our minds.
Staving Off Cognitive Decline