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I worked at an academic neuroscience software company back when Lumosity first emerged on the scene. Lumosity was spurred on by I believe statistically signific
by jackcosgrove 10y ago
I worked at an academic neuroscience software company back when Lumosity first emerged on the scene. Lumosity was spurred on by I believe statistically significant results regarding the n-back test improving working memory. There was a lot of hope that other games/tests might be designed to improve other cognitive features. However the n-back test is the only one I have ever heard of having a significant effect on cognition, and even then it's temporary. There was a lot of disappointment in these results. Nevertheless, Lumosity et al continued to market minigames as health elixirs.
- rixarn 10y agoYou're right. The amount of "exercises" that have proven to have some degree of transfer are very limited (n-back being the most typical not the only one). It's not only a problem of Lumosity et al, it's a problem on researchers too. There's an alarming amount of papers that are really bad, both methodologically and in terms of the type of tasks and training duration. No wonder the brain training industry gets bashed every now and then when a new study debunks most of the allegedly benefits. So we have a group of folks that don't understand what they are doing and are publishing bad papers, and another group of folks that read those papers without fully understanding what is going on under the hood and create a "brain training" app. The fine on Lumosity by FTC was fair and expected.