But neuroscientists warns against such claims, there are no serious studies that support them for software-based games. Even worse, those companies present referenced scientific papers that many times are only related to the games they sell.
This might be bad news for the brain-training games industry. The consensus in psychology, after many trials and failure on different techniques, that brain intelligence cannot be improved in general, so Brain Training games are no exception... except when N-Back game arrived.
Basically the problem with brain training games is that you improve the specific abilities the game requires, but these improvements does not transfer to other areas of the brain and consequently does not improve the general brain performance.
Notwithstanding, other studies does suggest that a game in particular does improve fluid intelligence, that is, the ability to solve new problems and a good measure of general intelligence. This game is called N-Back and consist on recalling past elements of a changing sequence: if the current element matches a previous one, e.g. appeared 2 elements ago, the user must tap on it. Difficulty can be raised increasing the number of past elements, e.g. 3 elements ago, 4 elements ago, hence "N" the number of previous elements to take into account.
Research also found that the longer the training period the better.
I have placed an inline N-Back game, so you can play with it. There are many implementations of this game. So, if you don't like this one, look for another one more suitable for you. You can play it here: http://you-can-learn.blogspot.com.es/p/n-back.html
References
- Neuroscientists speak out against brain game hype [Science Magazine]
- Brain Training doesn't make you smarter [Scientific American]
- Does Brain Trainin Work? [The Scientist]
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