Does Brain Training Actually Do Anything?

Although various online brain-training techniques are widely advertised, there is little empirical evidence that they work. To address this issue in a randomized, controlled, three-arm study, researchers recruited viewers of a British popular science television program.

Participants were assigned specific cognitive tasks similar to those in commercial programs, general tasks of planning and reasoning, or searching the Internet for answers to a list of obscure questions (control). Participants were asked to work online on the tasks (each group had 6 tasks) for a minimum of 10 minutes per session, three times per week, during the 6-week study. Testing at baseline and at week 6 included both specific cognitive tasks addressed by the training an…