Do brain-training apps actually work? What the research says

Last updated: June 2026 · By Thomas Løvaslokøy, founder & builder of BrainLoop. AI-assisted in drafting and fact-checked against the sources listed at the end. This is general information about cognitive-training research, not medical advice.

I build brain-training apps, so you'd expect me to tell you they'll make you smarter. Instead I'm going to tell you what the research actually says — including the part where a major brain-training company paid a $2 million fine for claiming too much. The honest answer to "do brain-training apps work?" is genuinely interesting, more nuanced than either the marketing or the backlash, and worth getting right — because this is your money, your time, and sometimes your fear of cognitive decline being marketed to.

First, what would "working" even mean?

This is the question that resolves most of the confusion. Cognitive scientists distinguish three different things a brain-training task could do:

1. Improve the trained task itself. Practise a number-memory game, get better at that game.
2. Near transfer — improve closely related tasks you didn't directly train.
3. Far transfer — improve general abilities and everyday life: your work, your memory for names, your overall "smartness."

Almost nobody disputes #1. The entire debate — and the entire marketing pitch — is really about #3. When an app implies it'll make you sharper in general, it's promising far transfer. So that's the claim to scrutinise.

The case for skepticism

In 2016, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission ordered Lumosity to pay $2 million to settle charges of deceptive advertising. The FTC said the company suggested its games could help people perform better at work and school and "stave off memory loss, dementia, and even Alzheimer's disease" — and that "Lumosity simply did not have the science to back up its ads."¹ That's not a fringe opinion; that's a federal regulator.

The science backs the regulator's caution. A landmark 2016 review in Psychological Science in the Public Interest — Simons and colleagues examined the studies brain-training companies themselves cited as evidence — found that brain-training tasks improve performance on the trained tasks themselves, but that there is "less evidence that cognitive training improves performance on closely related – but not identical – tasks, and very little evidence that it improves performance on distantly related tasks or improves everyday cognitive performance."² Summaries of the review put its bottom line bluntly: there is little evidence to date of real-world benefits from brain training. In plainer terms: you get good at the game, maybe a bit at its cousins, and there's little proof it carries over to real life.

Two years earlier, a group of scientists convened by the Stanford Center on Longevity and the Berlin Max Planck Institute had said much the same thing, warning that "claims promoting brain games are frequently exaggerated and at times misleading," with "little evidence that playing brain games improves underlying broad cognitive abilities." They reserved their sharpest words for the boldest claim, calling the suggestion that brain games prevent or reverse Alzheimer's a claim "devoid of any scientifically credible evidence."³

If you only read this far, the takeaway is clear: be deeply skeptical of any app that promises to raise your general intelligence or prevent dementia. That claim is not supported.

But it's not all noise — the other side of the debate

Here's where honesty requires me to keep going, because the story isn't "it's all a scam."

Months after that 2014 skeptical statement, a group of more than 100 neuroscientists and psychologists published a rebuttal, arguing that the skeptics had committed an "error of omission." They contended that "a substantial and growing body of evidence shows that certain cognitive training regimens can significantly improve cognitive function, including in ways that generalize to everyday life," pointing to "dozens of randomized, controlled trials."⁴ Real experts genuinely disagree here — that's worth knowing.

And there's at least one heavyweight study in their corner. The ACTIVE trial followed older adults for ten years after a brief course (about ten sessions) of cognitive training. Its results were striking: gains from reasoning and speed-of-processing training persisted a full decade later, and participants in all training groups reported less difficulty with everyday activities like managing finances and medications than untrained controls.⁵ (Notably, the memory-training arm didn't show the same durable cognitive effect — a reminder that "cognitive training" isn't one thing.)

So the picture isn't "useless." It's that well-designed, targeted training of specific abilities can produce real, lasting, even practically meaningful gains — particularly in older adults, and particularly for the specific abilities being trained.

The honest synthesis

Put the two sides together and a defensible middle emerges:

• You reliably get better at what you practise. That's real and not trivial — if you want to be quicker at mental arithmetic or better at remembering a deck of facts, training that specific skill works.
• Broad "make me smarter overall" far transfer is weak and contested. Don't buy an app expecting your general intelligence to rise.
• Targeted, structured programmes can help specific domains (reasoning, processing speed) durably — but commercial "play 15 minutes of mixed mini-games" apps are not the same thing as the carefully designed interventions in those trials.
• No consumer app has earned the right to claim it prevents dementia or Alzheimer's. Full stop.

The gap between "I got faster at this game" and "I'm smarter at life" is exactly the gap the marketing tries to paper over — and the gap the FTC fined a company for crossing.

What the evidence supports more strongly for your brain

If your real goal is long-term cognitive health rather than a high score, the research points more consistently toward behaviours than toward any single app: regular physical exercise, adequate sleep, staying socially and mentally engaged, and — interestingly — learning genuinely new, demanding skills (a language, an instrument), where the challenge and novelty seem to matter more than any one drill.²³ These aren't products I'm selling you; they're just where the stronger evidence sits, and any honest answer has to say so.

So should you use a brain-training app?

Yes — if you're honest with yourself about why. A brain-training app is a great tool for:

• Practising a specific skill you actually want (recall, mental math, vocabulary).
• Building a daily habit of engaged, deliberate mental effort instead of passive scrolling.
• Enjoying it — motivation and consistency matter, and a game you'll return to beats a worksheet you won't.

It is not a shortcut to general intelligence or an insurance policy against cognitive decline. That's the line I hold for my own product. BrainLoop is a brain-training playground — flashcards, journaling, trivia, focus tools and more — and I'll tell you plainly what it's for: making deliberate mental practice enjoyable enough that you keep doing it, and giving you specific tools (like spaced-repetition flashcards) that do have strong learning-science behind them. What it won't do is promise you a bigger IQ. Anyone promising you that is the reason this article had to be careful.

Bottom line

Do brain-training apps work? They work at making you better at what you train, sometimes at closely related skills, and — for broad, everyday "smartness" — the evidence is thin and the boldest claims are unsupported. Use them for what they're genuinely good at, keep your skepticism for anything that sounds like a miracle, and put real weight on the unglamorous basics. That's not the pitch a marketer would write. It's the one the research supports.

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Sources

Footnotes

1. U.S. Federal Trade Commission (Jan 5, 2016). Lumosity to Pay $2 Million to Settle FTC Deceptive Advertising Charges for Its "Brain Training" Program. (FTC: company lacked science to support claims about work/school performance and staving off age-related decline, dementia, and Alzheimer's.) Confirmed via TechCrunch; primary release at ftc.gov. ↩

2. Simons, D. J., Boot, W. R., Charness, N., Gathercole, S. E., Chabris, C. F., Hambrick, D. Z., & Stine-Morrow, E. A. L. (2016). Do "Brain-Training" Programs Work? Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 17(3), 103–186. (Improvement on trained tasks; less on closely related; little on distantly related or everyday cognition.) APS summary · ScienceDaily summary ↩ ↩²

3. Stanford Center on Longevity & Max Planck Institute for Human Development (2014). A Consensus on the Brain Training Industry from the Scientific Community. ("Claims … frequently exaggerated and at times misleading"; the Alzheimer's-prevention claim called "devoid of any scientifically credible evidence.") https://longevity.stanford.edu/a-consensus-on-the-brain-training-industry-from-the-scientific-community-2/ ↩ ↩²

4. Cognitive Training Data Response Letter (2014), signed by 100+ neuroscientists and psychologists, countering the consensus statement and citing "dozens of randomized, controlled trials." https://www.cognitivetrainingdata.org/the-controversy-does-brain-training-work/response-letter/ ↩

5. Rebok, G. W., et al. (2014). Ten-Year Effects of the ACTIVE Cognitive Training Trial on Cognition and Everyday Functioning in Older Adults. (Reasoning and speed-of-processing gains persisted at 10 years; trained groups reported less difficulty with instrumental activities of daily living.) PMC. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4055506/ ↩