Do Brain Games Make You Smarter? What the Research Actually Says

The promise, and why it caught on

In the late 2000s a wave of apps and handheld games promised to make your brain younger, sharper and faster with a few minutes of puzzles a day. The idea was irresistible: the brain is like a muscle, so exercise it and it grows. Millions of people signed up, and a small industry grew around the claim.

We make brain games too, so it seems only fair to be honest about what they can and cannot do. The short version: you will get better at the games, the games can be good for you in other ways, but the evidence that they raise your general intelligence is weak. Here is what the research says, and why.

Near transfer and far transfer

Psychologists split the question in two. Near transfer means that practising one task makes you better at that task or at tasks very like it. Play a lot of mental arithmetic and you will get faster at mental arithmetic. That part is well established and not controversial.

Far transfer is the big promise: that practising a memory game makes you better at remembering names, reading contracts or solving problems at work. This is where the evidence runs thin. In 2016 a team of psychologists led by Daniel Simons published a long review of the studies that brain-training companies had cited in support of their products. They found plenty of evidence for near transfer, much less for tasks only loosely related to the training, and little convincing evidence that training improved everyday thinking.

The case that made headlines

The debate became public in 2014, when around seventy scientists signed an open statement organised by the Stanford Center on Longevity warning that brain-game marketing was running ahead of the science. A group of other researchers responded with their own letter, arguing that some training did show promise. Both sides agreed that more careful studies were needed.

Two years later, in 2016, the company behind Lumosity agreed to pay two million dollars to settle charges from the US Federal Trade Commission that its adverts had claimed, without enough evidence, that its games could improve performance at school and work and delay age-related decline. The settlement did not say the games were useless. It said the big promises had not been proven.

Where the evidence is more hopeful

It is not all negative. The largest long-running study, called ACTIVE, followed nearly three thousand older adults in the United States who received a few weeks of training in memory, reasoning or processing speed. The trained groups improved on the specific skill they practised, and some of that improvement was still measurable years later.

A later analysis of the same study reported that people who did the speed training had a lower rate of dementia diagnoses after ten years. That finding attracted a lot of attention, but researchers have urged caution: it is one study, the effect needs replicating, and it was specific to one type of training. It is a reason for curiosity rather than a guarantee.

What actually keeps a mind sharp

When researchers look at what is linked to healthy thinking over a lifetime, the list is less exciting than an app and more reliable:

• Physical exercise. Regular aerobic exercise has some of the most consistent evidence for supporting memory and attention.
• Sleep. The brain consolidates what you learned during the day while you sleep; short sleep reliably makes thinking worse.
• Learning something genuinely new and hard. A language, an instrument or a craft stretches far more of the brain than a repeated puzzle.
• Time with other people. Conversation is a complicated mental task, and social connection is linked to healthier ageing.
• Looking after the basics. Blood pressure, hearing and general health all matter to the brain more than most people expect.

So why play brain games at all?

Because they are fun, and fun is a perfectly good reason. A few minutes of Math Sprint or Memory Stack is a pleasant break, a small daily challenge you can measure yourself against, and a way to notice how your focus changes when you are tired or rushed. If you want to get better at a specific skill, like arithmetic in your head, targeted practice does work for that skill.

Games can also teach you something about how your own mind works. Logic Patterns shows you how you approach a puzzle you cannot immediately solve; our article on why a sequence slips away after four or five items explains what Memory Stack is really testing. Understanding that is worth more than any promised boost in brain power.

Just treat them as what they are: good entertainment with some real practice built in, not a replacement for sleep, exercise, friends and learning new things.