Do brain training games work, or do you just get better at the game?

What the brain game results really say

The table sorts the usual brain game promises from strongest to weakest. Read it from the top down. The top row is true. Each row below it asks the gains to travel further from the game, and the evidence gets thinner as it goes.

Psychologists have names for this. Near transfer means you get better at tasks a lot like the one you trained. Far transfer means the gain shows up somewhere else, like in your job. The 2016 review by Daniel Simons and colleagues looked at the studies the companies themselves cited. It found plenty of evidence for the first, less for close cousins, and little for everyday thinking.

The fourth row is not a study at all. It is a federal agency. On January 5, 2016, the Federal Trade Commission announced that the company behind Lumosity would pay $2 million to settle charges that its ads lacked scientific support.

Ten minutes a day, and the same tired afternoon

You do the app every morning. Your score climbs. The little chart goes up and to the right, and that feels good.

Then it is 3pm. You have a report open, a chat window blinking and an email you keep starting. You jump between them forty times. The report does not move.

So you wonder if you need more training. Maybe a harder level.

Here is the thing nobody in the ads will say, and we will. Your brain did learn. It learned the game.

What to practice instead

The research points somewhere plainer. You get better at what you practice. And one finding is rock solid: every time you switch tasks, you pay a small cost in time and mistakes. Getting ready for a switch lowers the cost. It does not remove it.

A morning with forty switches pays that price forty times. So the useful skill is not switching faster. It is switching less.

You can feel this in two minutes. Write the alphabet from A to Z and time it. Then write 1 to 26 and time it. Then mix them, A1, B2, C3, all the way to Z26. Most people find the mixed round takes longer than the other two added together. Same letters. Same numbers. The extra time is the switching.

Then try a switch budget. Tomorrow, make a tick in your notebook each time you move to a different task. Checking messages counts. At night, count the ticks. The next day, cut that number by a third. Group your messages into two or three blocks, and give your hardest task one long stretch. When you must stop, write one line about where you are and what comes next.

The book marks the alphabet test SOLID, since switch costs are among the most reliable findings in psychology. It marks the budget STORY ONLY, because nobody has tested it as a daily habit yet. It is built from solid findings, and your notebook is the test.

What about dementia, crosswords and older adults?

Many people play brain games to protect their memory as they age. That is a different question from focus at work, so we checked a dementia charity.

Alzheimer's Society says there is no strong evidence that brain training lowers the risk of dementia. It also says that people who do mentally challenging things, like crosswords, puzzles or a new hobby, tend to have lower rates of dementia. Those are studies that watch people, not tests that assign them, so they cannot show the puzzle is the cause.

The same page reports one pooled review where about three sessions of 30 minutes or more a week gave a small gain in thinking and memory. People who trained alone at home, with no supervision, did not improve.

So a crossword you enjoy is a fine habit. It is not a proven shield. The FTC case above was partly about exactly this kind of dementia claim in ads. If you notice real memory changes, that is a talk with your doctor, not a new app.

The chapter that sorts the games from the evidence

This is the problem The Genius Lab was written for: a brain claim you keep hearing, checked against what the studies found.

Switching Fast, and What Switching Costs has both drills above, the full story of the FTC case, the 2016 reviews in plain words, and ways to cut the switches other people push onto you. It also covers the switches that start inside your own head, and where to put them.

Building Rooms in Your Head covers one memory method that does have strong evidence behind it, the memory palace. Our memory palace page shows how to start.

Sleep, Movement, and the Supplement Aisle covers the two things with better brain evidence than any app or pill. They are free, and you already do one of them every night.