Does Brain Training Help Cognitive Function?

In the last decade a number of brain training programs have become popular. The concept is that by training your brain you can improve your cognitive functioning and make better decisions, thereby improving the quality of your life. The researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, decided to test this assumption.

Associate professor Joseph Kable, who co-led the study wanted to find out more about how the brain functioned, specially regarding addictive behavior. The study had two groups of which one received brain training 30 minutes a day, five days a week for 10 weeks. The second group played online video games for the same duration.

At the end of this duration both groups were given a series of cognitive tests to perform. It was found that the group with brain training did not do any better than the group who played video games. Both group participants showed a mild improvement over their initial performances before the ten weeks activities.

Eventually the finding of this science experiment which were published in the Journal of Neuroscience suggested that the commercial brain training programs really did not make a big difference to the cognitive functioning ability of the person undergoing the training.