It's the million-dollar question: does playing brain games actually make you smarter? The answer is nuanced, but the evidence is clearer than you might think.
A landmark 2008 study by Jaeggi et al. found that practicing the N-Back task improved fluid intelligence — the ability to solve novel problems. Participants who trained for 25 minutes a day showed measurable gains after just 8 days.
In 2014, a group of 70 scientists signed a statement saying brain training claims were overhyped. Their main concern: transfer. Getting better at Sudoku makes you better at Sudoku, but does it make you better at planning your day?
The latest meta-analyses (2020–2025) paint a clearer picture:
Working memory training (N-Back, Digit Span) shows the strongest evidence of near-transfer to other memory tasks
Processing speed training (reaction games, Stroop) reliably improves response times in untrained tasks
Far transfer to general intelligence remains debatable, but the cognitive benefits of staying mentally active are undeniable
"The key is adaptive difficulty, variety, and consistency. Doing the same easy puzzle every day doesn't help. You need to push just beyond your comfort zone."
This is why our games use adaptive difficulty — Sudoku gets harder, reaction tests track your personal best, and N-Back levels automatically progress.
Brain training won't turn you into a genius, but consistent cognitive exercise has real benefits:
Faster processing speed
Better working memory capacity
Improved selective attention
Cognitive reserve against age-related decline
The best approach? Combine brain training with physical exercise, quality sleep, and social engagement. Your brain needs all of them.
Start training with evidence-backed games
2002 — ACTIVE trial. 2,832 adults aged 65+ received memory, reasoning or speed training. Each group improved on its trained skill (Ball et al., JAMA, 2002), and at ten years the reasoning and speed groups reported less difficulty with daily activities (Rebok et al., Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 2014).
2008 — Jaeggi n-back study. Training on the dual n-back task was reported to improve fluid intelligence (Jaeggi et al., PNAS, 2008).
2010 — BBC Brain Test Britain. 11,430 adults trained online for six weeks. They improved on the games but showed almost no transfer to untrained tests (Owen et al., Nature, 2010).
2013 — replication and meta-analysis. A careful replication with an active control group found no gain in fluid intelligence from n-back training (Redick et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2013), and a meta-analysis found that working memory gains were short-lived and did not transfer to skills such as reading or arithmetic (Melby-Lervåg and Hulme, Developmental Psychology, 2013).
2014 — expert statement. Around 70 scientists signed a consensus statement through the Stanford Center on Longevity warning that brain game marketing overstated the evidence.
2016 — review and regulation. A comprehensive review found strong evidence for improvement on trained tasks and weak evidence for far transfer (Simons et al., Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2016). The same year, the US Federal Trade Commission settled with the maker of Lumosity over unsupported advertising claims.
Choose games close to skills you care about. Practising Speed Math helps mental arithmetic; practising Reaction Time helps simple reactions.
Keep the difficulty at your edge, so you make mistakes regularly.
Practise in short sessions spread across the week.
Measure progress on an untrained task, not only on the game itself.
Combine training with exercise, sleep and social activity, which have broader evidence.
Brain games improve specific trained skills (working memory, processing speed, attention). They don't reliably raise general IQ, but the targeted gains are real.
Dual N-Back has the most published evidence for transfer to fluid intelligence. The Stroop and Go/No-Go tasks are gold-standard for attention and inhibition.
Most people notice improvements on trained tasks within 1–2 weeks and broader cognitive gains within 4–8 weeks of consistent practice.
No — there's no peer-reviewed evidence that paid apps work better than free, well-designed alternatives. Save your money and train daily.
In 2016 the US Federal Trade Commission settled with Lumos Labs, the maker of Lumosity, over advertising claims it said were not supported by evidence. The settlement concerned the marketing claims, not whether practising games improves the games themselves.
Brain training works for the skills you practise and sometimes for closely related ones. It has not been shown to raise general intelligence. Choose games that match the skills you want, keep them challenging and treat them as one part of a healthy routine. For free places to start, see brain exercises online and the Lumosity alternatives; for the longer reads, the best brain training books.