Brain-training games don't work

Study published in Nature that harnessed the power of the BBC has shown claims to boost cognitive function are empty promises

Brain-training games are big business. Self-improvement desires render us vulnerable to marketing claims that products will make us thinner, healthier, or in the case of brain-training software, smarter.

Enter science, "the blabber-mouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends", as Ned Flanders once described it. Until now, there had been scant empirical data on whether or not brain training actually improves your cognitive ability.

Alas, research published today in Nature indicates that the possibility of improving your general cognitive abilities by playing brain-training games is an empty promise. More than 11,000 volunteers were split into three groups: one who played brain-training-type exercises; a second practised more general cognitive tests; and a control group who just pootled around the internet answering random questions. They did this for six weeks, bookended by benchmarking tests of memory, reasoning and other standard tests of cognitive function.

All three groups displayed improvement in the tasks they were performing. But all three groups also showed only small and similar increases in the benchmarking tests, possibly simply the effect of repeating the test. Conclusion? Practising brain-training games will improve your performance on brain-training games, but that effect will not transfer to other aspects of brain function. They will not make you brainier, so you may as well just pootle around on the internet. As lead researcher Adrian Owen says: "You're not going to get better at playing the trumpet by practising the violin."

So, once again, science wins out over marketing. But what's equally interesting about this research is how it came to pass. It's not an easy task to get 11,000 volunteers to do what you want for six weeks. Television has that power. The BBC's Lab UK (which sets up public involvement in large experiments) teamed up with their prime-time science show Bang Goes the Theory and academic scientists to design the experiment, recruit the subjects, process the data, and publish the paper. The results show will be broadcast on Wednesday at 9pm in the UK.

BGTT is the de facto equivalent of Tomorrow's World. For us of a certain age, Thursday evenings were dominated by Top of the Pops and Tomorrow's World. So when the BBC announced this new show, a few years after TW had been axed, dorky anticipation was piqued. I suspect TW is not as good as we fondly remember it, certainly in its moribund years. Bang Goes the Theory is much more fun and, crucially, much more sciencey.

It serves its title well, with a whole heap of bang (mostly delivered by eager engineer-in-chief Jem), but also good theory. It's no small task to bring science to the masses, but BGTT educates, inspires and entertains. There has been some snobbish criticism of it, and comparisons with shows like Sky's mindless Brainiac, which had merely a lot of bang. There are five science degrees spread between the four presenters. It might not be to everyone's taste, but if you're reading this, you're probably not 12 years old. Building a water-powered jet pack or vacuum-powered suction climbing apparatus is indeed a stunt, but in order to get an engineering project like that to work, clear scientific thinking and testing are a prerequisite. There is enough scope and wonder in science to accommodate TV programmes ranging from BGTT, through the epic Wonders of the Solar System, to the more esoteric on BBC4.

And besides, they have shown that alongside the hilarious stunts, they also show good, robust and now published scientific research. With this brain-training paper comes vindication that peer-reviewed science can have widespread appeal and public involvement. Science is for the masses and, when it's done right, can involve them, too.

• Declaration of interest: Adam Rutherford is employed by Nature, which published the paper reported on here; he also frequently works for the BBC in science programming