Brain Exercises Don’t Live Up to the Hype, Researchers Say

The Wall Street Journal:

Computerized brain-training exercises and games, touted for their ability to improve overall cognitive function, may actually only help you get better at the specific game you’re playing.

That’s the conclusion of a wide-ranging review of nearly 400 studies of brain training published last week in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest. The review found that none of the studies followed scientific best practices for comparing a group of people practicing an intervention against a control group not getting the intervention.

“What we found is that there’s really no compelling evidence that these sorts of interventions lead to objectively measured real-world improvements,” says Daniel Simons, a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and first author of the review.

Read the whole story: The Wall Street Journal