Do Brain-Training Programs Work?

[Guest guest]

The below may be of interest:

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/04/do-brain-training-programs-work.ht\

ml

Play a computer game, boost your IQ—that's the claim made by some software

companies peddling so-called brain-training programs. It's probably an empty

promise, according to the largest study to date of brain-training software,

which finds no evidence of general cognitive benefits. Yet the study's

limitations give brain-training advocates plenty to gripe about.

The idea for the study originated with a BBC science television show, Bang Goes

the Theory. Producers contacted Owen at the MRC Cognition and Brain

Sciences Unit in Cambridge, U.K., to help design an experiment to test the

efficacy of computer brain training. Many of these programs are set up like a

game, and playing along supposedly boosts memory, attention, and other cognitive

functions. But few rigorous studies have been conducted on them, and many

researchers question whether even the best programs do anything more than make

people better at the game itself. For example, there's little solid research to

suggest that using these programs has a beneficial effect on overall cognition

that carries over into daily life.

In the new study, Owen and colleagues developed two online training programs and

tested them in 11,430 healthy adults who registered on a Web site set up by the

BBC. One group trained on a program that emphasized reasoning and

problem-solving skills, and another group trained on a program that emphasized

different skills, including short-term memory and attention. A third, control

group, essentially did busywork, hunting for answers to general knowledge

questions on the Internet. All participants were asked to " train " for at least

10 minutes, three times a week for 6 weeks, and all received a battery of

cognitive tests before and after this 6-week period.

Not surprisingly, people in both training groups got better at the tasks they

actually practiced. But that's as far as it went. " None of the brain-training

tasks transferred to other mental or cognitive abilities beyond what had been

specifically practiced, " Owen's co-author and MRC colleague Grahn said

at a press conference this morning announcing the results, which are published

online today in Nature.

Brain-training advocates are not impressed, however. " This article makes big

claims out of a single negative finding, " says Torkel Klingberg, a

neuroscientist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and founder of a company

that makes computer brain-training programs to improve working memory and other

cognitive functions. Klingberg has published one of the few studies

demonstrating that the benefits of training can generalize beyond a specific

task. Among other qualms with the new study, he notes that subjects trained an

average of only about 3 hours in total, and—for all the researchers know—may

have done so with the TV blaring in the background or other distractions.

Although Klingberg says he agrees with the authors that many of the

brain-training products on the market are probably ineffective, he argues that

just because Owen and colleagues developed a training program and showed it

didn't work doesn't mean that all such programs are worthless. " That does not

mean that cognitive functions cannot be trained, or that all training paradigms

lack effect, " he says.

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Carruthers

Wakefield, UK