Do Brain Training Apps Work? What the Trials Actually Found

Brain training apps reliably make people better at the games they practise. The large trials and reviews find little evidence that the gains spread to everyday memory, work or thinking. One long trial, ACTIVE, reported lasting effects for speed training with booster sessions, but its dementia finding is a claims based subgroup result, not settled proof.

On this page: one cited table of seven trials and reviews showing what brain training improved and what it did not, the ACTIVE trial’s twenty year dementia figures with their caveats, the 2016 Lumosity case, and what about 35 app users report.

Do brain training apps make you better at anything?

Yes, at the games. That part is not in dispute, and it is less trivial than it sounds: practise a puzzle every morning and you will get quicker at that puzzle. The real question is whether the skill leaks out of the app. Researchers call the first thing near transfer and the second far transfer, and almost every argument about brain training is an argument about the second.

The cleanest public test came from the BBC. In Owen and colleagues, 2010, published in Nature, viewers of the programme Bang Goes The Theory were randomly assigned to train on reasoning tasks, on tasks built to resemble commercial brain games, or to answer general knowledge questions. Of 52,617 who signed up, 11,430 completed the six weeks of at least ten minutes, three times a week, plus the tests before and after.

Everyone improved on what they practised. Nobody carried that improvement to untrained tests, even ones that looked closely related. The authors found no evidence for any generalised improvement in thinking in a large sample of healthy adults. Critics said six weeks was too short, which is a fair point.

Why did scientists sign two opposite letters in 2014?

Because the evidence was being read two ways. On 20 October 2014 the Stanford Center on Longevity and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development issued a statement from dozens of researchers. On reducing or reversing cognitive decline, it found “no compelling scientific evidence to date” that brain games do it. It also found little evidence that playing them improves broad thinking abilities.

In December 2014 a counter letter appeared on Cognitive Training Data. Reports put its signatories at anywhere from more than 120 to 133. It agreed that many commercial claims were overstated but argued that dozens of randomised trials showed specific benefits. It was led by Michael Merzenich, a co founder of the company behind one of the best known training programmes, which is worth knowing and is not by itself a reason to dismiss the letter.

Both letters were right about something, and the fight was over the gap between trained tasks and advertised promises.

What did the longest trial, ACTIVE, actually find?

ACTIVE is the trial both sides cite, so it is worth reading slowly. It enrolled 2,832 independent adults aged 65 and over in the United States and gave them about ten sessions of memory, reasoning or speed of processing training, or nothing. The first results in JAMA in 2002 showed each group improved on the ability it trained. No effect on everyday functioning was detected at two years.

The ten year follow up by Rebok and colleagues, 2014, found reasoning and speed gains still measurable, with effect sizes of 0.23 and 0.66. Memory gains had faded. About 60% of trained participants, against 50% of controls, said they were at or above their starting level on everyday tasks such as managing money or medication. That last figure is self reported, which matters.

Then in February 2026 came the twenty year follow up by Coe and colleagues, which linked 2,021 participants to Medicare records. Of those who did speed training plus booster sessions, 105 of 264, or 40%, later had a dementia diagnosis in their claims, against 239 of 491 controls, or 49%. Speed training without boosters, memory training and reasoning training showed no clear difference. The Johns Hopkins announcement of the paper led on the same booster finding.

This is the most hopeful result in the field, and it needs its caveats said plainly. Boosters went only to people who completed most of the first sessions, so the boosted group may have differed from the start. Diagnoses came from insurance claims, not clinical assessment. It is one subgroup of one trial, and the authors themselves call for confirmation. It does not show that any app on a phone prevents dementia.

What do the big reviews say about far transfer?

The table gathers the main trials and reviews in one place, with what each found improved and what it did not. Every row links to its source. The figures describe groups of volunteers in studies and say nothing about any one reader.

Study	Who or what was studied	What improved	What did not
ACTIVE, Ball and colleagues, 2002	Adults aged 65 and over	Each of the three trained abilities (memory, reasoning, speed)	No effect on everyday functioning at 2 years
Owen and colleagues, 2010	11,430 adults aged 18 to 60, six weeks online	The tasks people practised	Untrained tasks, even closely related ones
ACTIVE ten year follow up, Rebok and colleagues, 2014	2,832 adults, mean age 73.6	Reasoning (effect 0.23) and speed (0.66) still ahead; fewer reported daily living difficulties	Memory test gains were no longer maintained
Lampit and colleagues, 2014	52 studies, 4,885 healthy older adults	Small pooled effect, g = 0.22; memory, speed and visuospatial tests	Executive function and attention; home based training
Simons and colleagues, 2016	132 papers cited by brain training supporters	Plenty of evidence for the trained tasks	Little evidence for distant tasks or everyday performance
Sala and colleagues, 2019	A review of earlier meta-analyses	Near transfer, for example from working memory training	Far transfer: zero once placebo effects and publication bias were controlled
ACTIVE twenty year follow up, Coe and colleagues, 2026	2,021 adults, Medicare records 1999 to 2019	Speed training with boosters: 40% later diagnosed with dementia versus 49% of controls	Speed without boosters, memory and reasoning training: no clear difference

Read down the right hand column and the pattern is hard to miss. The 2016 review by Simons and colleagues went through the 132 papers that brain training supporters themselves had cited, and found extensive evidence for the trained tasks and little for everyday performance. It also complained that many studies compared trainees with people who did nothing, which cannot separate training from expectation.

That is the gap Sala and colleagues, 2019 tested. Pooling earlier meta-analyses, they found that once placebo effects and publication bias were controlled, the overall far transfer effect was zero. The more generous Lampit review of 2014 found a small average benefit in healthy older adults, g = 0.22, but none for attention or executive function, and none for training done at home, which is where every app is used.

What happened when Lumosity’s adverts met the regulator?

In January 2016 the US Federal Trade Commission announced that Lumos Labs, the maker of Lumosity, would pay $2 million to settle charges of deceptive advertising. A $50 million judgment was suspended. The FTC said the company had claimed without proper evidence that its games could help people perform better at work and at school and could delay age related decline.

The order required competent and reliable scientific evidence before any such claim in future. It did not say the games were useless. It said the adverts had run well ahead of the science, which is roughly where the advert promising ten IQ points by Friday still lives.

What do people who use these apps say they notice?

The trials measure averages. This page also read three public Reddit threads from December 2025 to September 2026, about 35 posts and replies in all. These are personal accounts from people who chose to post, not findings, and nothing here says what an app will do for anyone.

In an r/BrainFog thread from June 2026, a parent said work and family had wrecked their focus and asked whether a short daily app was helping or whether they had simply tricked themselves into feeling better. The top replies did not answer the question. They suspected the post was a stealth advert, because it praised an app without naming it. One longer reply, from someone using a paid app daily for six months, said it had helped their confidence with sums inside the app but that bad days in real life continued.

In an r/lumosity thread from September 2026, a user asked long term players what had changed outside the games. A player in their sixties on a 100 day streak said they felt good after each session and had become better at games he once hated, but put a noticeable difference in daily life at “probably not”.

In an r/lifehacks post from December 2025, with over 800 upvotes, the author argued that bite sized learning apps do not make anyone sharper and suggested reading difficult books instead. The replies mostly argued about which books, not about the apps.

The accounts line up with the reviews more closely than the adverts do. People report getting better at the games, enjoying the routine and feeling more confident. Almost nobody claims a change they can point to outside the app, and in two of the three threads someone suspected a sales pitch.

Is a five minute check-in the same thing as brain training?

No, and the difference is the point of this site. Brain training tries to change something. A check-in only records how a few short games went that day, so that you can compare with your own earlier days. Scores rise a little with practice alone, which is the near transfer the trials describe, and they move with sleep, stress and time of day, as covered in the pages on what one short night does to memory and why reaction time moves across a day.

If you want a record of how your own attention and reaction games move across a week, the free Awareness Score check-in takes about five minutes and compares only with your own earlier check-ins. It is not training, it claims to improve nothing, and it is not a diagnosis or a medical test. The honest limits of a five minute check-in are set out separately.

If your memory or thinking has changed in a way that worries you or the people close to you, no app is the next step. The NHS memory loss page lists common treatable causes, such as stress, sleeping problems and some medicines, and advises seeing a GP if memory problems are affecting daily life.

Frequently asked questions

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General information from published research and public health bodies, checked on 31 October 2026. It is not medical advice, and the Awareness Score app is not a medical test. If your memory or thinking has changed noticeably, or worries you or the people close to you, talk to your doctor.