Facts about Brain Training

The sensational headline published by Nature online (http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100420/full/4641111a.html, also  reported by ABC news in Australia and Medscape deserves a little attention. It is an example of tabloid media and bad science collaboration on producing contraversies that can confuse and discourage some people to use good Brain Training products to improve their brain health and performace.

Here are some resources that can shed light on the reality of Brain Training:

Response from Tokel Klinberg, MD, PhD, Professor in Cognitive Neuroscience at Karolinska Institute, expert in neuroplasticity and the founder of Cogmed Working Memory Training

"This article makes a big thing out of a negative finding. What is important to remember is that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. This paper does in no way disprove that the brain is plastic or that cognitive functions can be improved by training.

 Wgat  have  they have done is equivalent of asking a lot of subject to go out and get natural supplements that are marked “healthy”, ask them to eat a bit of that and check their health before and after. In such a trial, one would most probably not get any effect at all. From this you can’t say that what we eat does not matter for our health, which we know is totally wrong.  You could draw the conclusion that many natural products are wrongly marketed and badly tested. In that conclusion I agree with the authors of the article: a lot of what is currently marketed as “brain training” is not created based on scientific evidence, not properly tested (if at all), and wrongly marketed. But that does not mean that cognitive functions cannot be trained, or that all training products lack effect.

Two factors could be highlighted. First of all: the amount of training was low, which is also acknowledged by the authors. On average the subjects trained 24 times á 10 minutes – a total of 4 hours on different tests. Ours and others research suggests that 30 minutes per day, for a total of 8-12 hours of training on one specific test (or construct, such as working memory) is needed to get a result (Klingberg et al. 2005; Jaeggi et al. 2008). Secondly, there was no quality control for either the training or the testing. Asking subjects to sit at home and do tests online, perhaps with the TV on or other distractions around, is likely to result in noisy data. Noise in - noise out, and negative findings."

 Comment from Working Memory Australia:

Cogmed Working Memory Training is closely monitored by highly qualified coaches, most of whom have years of training in Psychology, Medicine or Education. The methodology used  for Working Memory Training has a very solid evidence base from published and peer reviewed studies. Please visit the page on Science Working Memory Training at www.cogmed.com