Brain games may be a billion-dollar business, but buyer beware when the companies that create them start making wild claims about their cognitive benefit, warned a Western neuroscientist.
"Brain training is a self-perpetuating force of nature. It has been exasperating to see the public get suckered into this the way they have," said Adrian Owen, Canada Excellence Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience and Imaging at the Brain and Mind Institute.
Brain training made headlines last week when the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ordered one such company, Lumos Labs, maker of Lumosity, to pay $2 million to settle federal allegations it misled customers about the cognitive benefits.
The Lumosity program consists of 40 games purportedly designed to train specific areas of the brain. The company advertised training on these games for 10-15 minutes, three or four times a week, could help users achieve their "full potential in every aspect of life." The company sold both online and mobile app subscriptions, with options ranging from monthly ($14.95) to lifetime ($299.95) memberships.
Reduce cognitive impairment associated with health conditions, including stroke, traumatic brain injury, PTSD, ADHD, the side effects of chemotherapy, and Turner syndrome, and that scientific studies proved these benefits.
"One of the problems is, the science is being misrepresented. Of course, brain training works. If you practice the violin, you get better at playing the violin. Your brain has changed. The public is aware of that," he explained. "But what brain-training companies are doing is distorting that message.
The Western Psychology professor has a history debunking the industry.
In 2010, Owen and an international team of researchers conducted the largest trial to date of 'brain-training' computer games. Their findings showed zero transfer effects from the training tasks to more general tests of cognition. A paper based on their findings, Putting brain training to the test, was published in Nature in June 2010 and has been cited more than 500 times since.
In 2015, Owen served as scientific advisor to CBC's Marketplace for an investigation into brain-training games such as Lumosity. Those findings, yet again, found no significant improvement on any of the tests.
Lumosity is one of the most visible services in the brain training industry, which has estimated sales of more than $1 billion per year, according to trade publications.
The company also cited two papers published in open-access journals, PLOS ONE and Frontiers in Psychology, as further evidence of its product's success.
Owen, however, cautioned about following the lead of white papers or industry-financed studies to base policy on in this area. He echoed other scientists' calls for a return to peer-review journals as a standard in these instances.
"I am spending my whole life and lots of public money trying to find things that will help things like Alzheimer's disease," Owen continued. "It's a tough nut to crack. It is a very difficult problem for tens of thousands of neuroscientists around the world. It's pretty insulting that a company can just put on their website that doing these games can reduce the cognitive impact of dementia. It obviously cannot be true.
Owen stressed buyers can enjoy these products for what they are, but should take responsibility for their own brains in the end.
He even encouraged true-believers in brain-training games to put their abilities to the test – test your brain, play the games, then test your brain again.
Looking for an evidence-based way to test your own cognitive abilities? Visit the Cambridge Brain Sciences website, cambridgebrainsciences.com, for a full battery of free scientifically proven tools for the assessment of cognitive function over the web.