Do Lumosity, Elevate, and other brain training machines work?

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Lumosity and Elevate are brain trainers that improve cognitive skills. They are not the only ones of their kind, but perhaps the most popular. We decided to find out whether they really have a positive effect on brain activity and whether it is worth spending time and money on them.

With the naked eye, you can see that people are beginning to recognize video games, but it is still considered shameful to say that you like to spend your free time playing World of Tanks or Dota 2. And this is despite the fact that there are more players than Internet users (1, 2 billion versus 3.2 billion). But the position of opponents of games is weakening every year, not least thanks to brain simulators like Lumosity.

Lumosity and similar services work in a similar way. They have mini-games, each of which is aimed at developing mental abilities and individual skills. Attention, memory, speed of thinking, flexibility in problem solving - all this can be trained through short games, which are also quite fun.

For the last six months I have not visited Lumosity, although before that I devoted 20-30 minutes to it almost every day. After stumbling across a comparison between Lumosity and Elevate, two of the most popular brain training machines, I decided to develop my cognitive skills again and even wanted to pay for the premium version.

And at the same moment I realized that I did not know anything about Lumosity, except what the developer itself said.

According to the Lumosity page, the simulator helps in the prevention and treatment of cancer, Turner syndrome, dementia and other diseases. It is noteworthy that all these studies were carried out either by Lumos Labs - the company that created Lumosity - or by HCP Collaborations, which cooperates with the company and is funded by it.

The research is backed up by tapes, large test groups and big names in the scientific field. But it is obvious that one cannot trust them unconditionally: Lumos Labs is too strongly interested in working on these studies.

Since Lumosity is the most popular player in this market, I tried to find independent research and evaluations of its work. Unfortunately, there are not many of them. To be precise, there are only two studies.

Psychologists and neuroscientists at the Stanford Center for Longevity that Lumosity exaggerates its merits. The simulator has practically no effect on people of age.

The most pernicious myth, they say, is the company's claims that Lumosity can prevent or reverse Alzheimer's.

In theory, Lumosity games can work wonders, but in practice, this does not work. Comes to the ridiculous: University of Florida professors cognitive skills of two groups of subjects. The first group played Portal 2 for eight hours in a row, the second - the same time, but in the Lumosity minigames.

The test took place in three stages. One skill was assessed on each: a creative approach to solving a problem, orientation in space, persistence (perseverance) in solving a problem. The results of this study, with peace of mind, can be poked in the face not only of Lumosity fans, but also of video game opponents in general.

Creative - Portal 2 players won.
Spatial Orientation - Portal 2 players won (by a wide margin).
Persistence in solving problems - Portal 2 players won.

With constant use of Lumosity, the brain will get better at solving problems, the score in games will increase. Nevertheless, this is one of the features of our brain: when repeating the same actions each time, it performs them more efficiently.

And judging by independent research, the ability to quickly change the route of the engine so that it passes into the desired tunnel, or to guess two identical cards is unlikely to have an impact on anything other than the game itself. You will still forget the names of the people where you put the keys and where the second sock of the pair is.

Despite this, research still confirms that games have a positive effect on the brain. This area is a huge field for study. Perhaps the video games of the future can dramatically improve our cognitive abilities. But at the moment, expecting any result from Lumosity is not worth it.