Brain Training
I used to lose keys, wallets, and cell phones. Now I can trace my tracks and go back and find them. … I loved learning how to activate my brain and use it to full capacity. I am still brain training now, because I feel better for it.
- Koko, a retired aluminum smelter on brain training
Koko is quoted by BrainHQ, a website like Lumosity that (for a fee) promises to help you improve your cognitive skills through point-and-click brain training games.
Penelope, a retired gerontology nurse practitioner, started online brain training when she found herself “[hesitating] when trying to find words.”
Cab driver Mike used brain training and reported that “My memory is so much better. It used to be you could say your name, and ten seconds later I wouldn’t know it. That has changed.”
After breaking a pair of nail clippers, manual therapist and neuroscientist Lauren stared at the pieces and then, “Everything just fell into place, and it took me only about 30 seconds to put it together! It was almost weird.”
Almost weird? Nail clippers have at most 4 pieces.
Former schoolteacher, Ron, said that brain training not only improved his memory for phone numbers but also saved his life. He was only six weeks into training when he pulled onto a busy highway, realized it was dangerous. He decided in an instant not to hit the brakes:
Instead, I floored it and charted a course through. It was almost scary how fast my brain was!
It was almost scary! Ron survived to remember more phone numbers thanks to his gut instincts. But if his online brain training was so good, why didn’t it keep him from pulling into traffic in the first place?
Welcome to the weird, scary world of online brain training where the apps promise everything on the road to a neurological Big Rock Candy Mountain.
According to the FTC, Lumosity promised that its online brain training games would:
improve performance on everyday tasks, in school, at work, and in athletics; delay age-related cognitive decline and protect against mild cognitive impairment, dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease; and 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.
In 2016, the FTC fined Lumosity $50 million (later reduced to $2 million) for deceptive advertising. In announcing the fine, the director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection wrote:
Lumosity preyed on consumers’ fears about age-related cognitive decline, suggesting their games could stave off memory loss, dementia, and even Alzheimer’s disease. But Lumosity simply did not have the science to back up its ads.
Fear of dementia and cognitive decline is real and justified — approximately 10% of Americans will show signs of dementia in their 70s. That fear drives many to the brain training websites for what they hope is a scientific preventative measure. There is no agreement among neuroscientists on the value of brain training, but recent studies suggest that brain training does little to affect function in daily life.
Lumosity posts on its website a 2015 study conducted by its own employees that proves that their games improve cognitive skills more than crossword puzzles. However, a study by Florida State University neuroscientists showed that the video game Portal 2 provided more neural benefit than Lumosity.
Online brain training is touted as the “scientific” method for improving your brain, marketed with a simple logic: I go to the gym to exercise my body, I should exercise my brain as well. It seems obvious — lift weights and your arm gets stronger, complete exercises on the computer and your mind gets stronger. However, this logic plays on a misconception that the brain is a muscle.
The brain is not a repetitive muscle, instead it builds millions (maybe even billions) of networks to accomplish specific tasks — networks that are indeed strengthened by repetition of the tasks. Furthermore, the cognitive skills trained by the brain training games are not transferable, which means the skill you practice online does not provably transfer to a skill in life.
Bobby Stojanoski, a research scientist in the Brain and Mind Institute at Western University, hypothesized that mastering one online brain test will be followed by skill and mastery in similar online tests. Writing in the journal Neuropsychologia, Stojanoski said:
Despite hours of brain training on that one game, participants were no better at the second game than people who tested on the second game, but hadn’t trained on the first one. If you hear a company or an advertisement [saying], ‘do brain training, do this thing for half an hour and you’ll get a higher IQ’ — that’s very, very appealing. Unfortunately, there’s just no evidence to support that claim.
In other words, the more you play the online game the more you are training your brain to play that game and only that game. If your muscles functioned like the brain, you could train to bench press 200 lbs in the gym only to find that you couldn’t lift 50 lbs of luggage at the airport.
Nonetheless, the brain training companies still want you to dream of that Big Rock Candy Mountain, by
The lemonade springs
Where the bluebird sings
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
Where you never lose your keys, never forget a name, weirdly assemble nail clippers deftly avoid car crashes, and reach your full mental capacity.
We all want to achieve full mental capacity. But who even knows what that is? Surely learning to retrace your steps to find lost keys isn’t a major neural breakthrough — your mother should have taught you that the first time you lost your stuffed bunny.
Reviewing the testimonials from the BrainHQ website, the achievements are mundane, readily acquired without specialized brain training:
- Remembering phone numbers
- Learning names
- Tracking personal items like keys and glasses
- Recalling words on demand
When we fail in these dull and daily tasks, we — at a certain age — immediately suspect oncoming dementia. Or if not dementia at least early-onset adult paranoia. We seek comfort in the mind games — counting bags of luggage in an animated hotel, identifying bird locations, routing toy trains across cartoon landscapes.
All of this may be fun, but it skirts a more fundamental question: what do you really want to use your brain for? Is it the full capacity of your brain to remember where you left your keys?
The full capacity of your brain (again, whatever that is supposed to be) should be designed towards accomplishing your highest aspirations: getting along with people, raising children, writing a novel, learning a new language, playing music, or whatever you decide is more rewarding than reassembling a nail clipper.
Don’t worry about the little gaffes in your mental life, we all have them at any age. Instead, ask yourself deeper questions, engage with more abstract issues, consider ideas with more complexity. The strength of your brain is not in the speed of identifying video butterflies, but in examining your life and the world closely with honesty.
In his article, Stojanoski recommends that you can stay “mentally fit” if you:
Sleep better, exercise regularly, eat better, education is great — that’s the sort of thing we should be focused on. If you’re looking to improve your cognitive self, instead of playing a video game or playing a brain-training test for an hour, go for a walk, go for a run, socialize with a friend. These are much better things for you.
Don’t be distracted by animated games, focus on what you love to do and your brain will keep up with you. Take a moment to review what cognition is: the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses.
Thought, experience, and your senses — the only brain training you need.
Dan Hunter is an award-winning playwright, songwriter, teacher and founding partner of Hunter Higgs, LLC, an advocacy and communications firm. H-IQ, the Hunter Imagination Questionnaire, invented by Dan Hunter and developed by Hunter Higgs, LLC, received global recognition for innovation by Reimagine Education, the world’s largest awards program for innovative pedagogies. Out of a field of 1200 applicants from all over the world, H-IQ was one of 12 finalists in December 2022. H-IQ is being used in pilot programs in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, North Carolina and New York. He is co-author, with Dr. Rex Jung and Ranee Flores, of A New Measure of Imagination Ability: Anatomical Brain Imaging Correlates, published March 22, 2016 in The Frontiers of Psychology, an international peer-reviewed journal. He’s served as managing director of the Boston Playwrights Theatre at Boston University, published numerous plays with Baker’s Plays, and has performed his one-man show ABC, NPR, BBC and CNN. Formerly executive director of the Massachusetts Advocates for the Arts, Sciences, and Humanities (MAASH) a statewide advocacy and education group, Hunter has 25 years’ experience in politics and arts advocacy. He served as Director of the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs (a cabinet appointment requiring Senate confirmation). His most recent book, Atrophy, Apathy & Ambition,offers a layman’s investigation into artificial intelligence.