Do brain training apps actually work?
You get better at the exercises you practise. Whether that carries over into everyday thinking is a different question, and the honest answer is that the evidence is weak. The most thorough review of the field concluded that improvements are largely confined to the trained task itself.
What exactly is being claimed?
Brain-training products generally promise three things, and they are not equally well supported:
- You improve at the exercise. Well supported. Practice works.
- You improve at similar tasks. Weakly supported. Researchers call this near transfer.
- You think better in daily life. Barely supported. This is far transfer, and it is the claim the marketing actually sells.
Almost all the disagreement lives in step three.
What did the research find?
In 2016, Daniel Simons and colleagues published a book-length review in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, going through the brain-training literature study by study. Their conclusion: there is strong evidence that training improves performance on the trained task, less evidence that it improves closely related tasks, and little evidence that it improves everyday cognitive performance.
Simons put the problem in one line: if you practise remembering playing cards, you will get very good at remembering playing cards — but does that help you remember which medications to take, and when?
That is far transfer in a sentence, and it is where the field runs out of support.
Was there a real disagreement among scientists?
Yes, and it is unusually well documented. In 2014 two groups of researchers published competing open letters. The first, a consensus statement signed by more than 70 scientists, argued that brain games do not provide a scientifically grounded way to improve cognitive functioning or to stave off cognitive decline. A second group replied that the evidence was more promising.
The 2016 review was written to settle what the studies could actually support. It did not find that brain training does nothing. It found that the strongest claims outran the data.
Why do the apps feel like they are working?
Because something real is happening — it is just narrower than it seems.
You are genuinely improving. At that exercise. Your score goes up, which is convincing on its own.
The format stops being unfamiliar. A large part of early improvement on any test is learning how the test works.
You chose to be there. People who sign up for brain training are people who believe in it, and expectation moves self-reported outcomes.
None of these are illusions exactly. They are just not evidence that anything transferred.
Does this mean you should not use them?
Not at all — it means you should be clear about what you are buying.
If you enjoy the puzzles, that is a complete reason to do them. Fifteen minutes of reasoning problems is a reasonable way to spend fifteen minutes, and the reviews do not suggest otherwise.
What the evidence does not support is paying for a promised outcome: a sharper memory at work, protection against decline, a higher score on something you have not practised. When a product makes that promise, it is making a claim the literature does not back.
How we treat this in our own app
iQ Asist has nine short reasoning exercises alongside its tests. We do not claim they will make you smarter, raise your IQ, or protect your memory, because we would be describing a benefit that the largest review of this field could not find. They are exercises. Some people find them a good way to spend a few minutes, and that is the whole pitch.
If you are curious what the number at the end of a test represents in the first place, we went through that in what an IQ score actually means.
More on this in tests and training.
Frequently asked questions
So brain training does nothing at all?
It does one thing well: you get better at the task you practise. The disputed claim is the next step — that this improvement carries over into unrelated everyday abilities.
What is far transfer?
Improvement on a trained task carrying over to a different, untrained ability. It is the claim most brain-training marketing rests on, and the one with the least evidence behind it.
Who says the claims are overstated?
In 2014 a consensus statement signed by more than 70 scientists argued that brain games are not a scientifically grounded way to improve cognitive functioning. Simons and colleagues reviewed the field in detail in 2016.
Is there any harm in using these apps?
The apps themselves are ordinary puzzle games. The risk is in the claims around them — money or hope spent on a promised outcome the evidence does not support.
What does improve thinking, then?
This article does not answer that, because doing so honestly requires its own evidence base. It only reports what the reviews say about training apps.