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Asked by mrholden to Nikki, Michael, Katherine, Joni, Ellie, Duncan, Daniel, Catriona, Anna on 20 Apr 2015.
Question: ello! Are any of you aware of, or involved with, a company called www.mycognition.com? Do you think the methodology works?
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Daniel Ansari answered on 20 Apr 2015:
I am not familiar with this specific company, but there is a growing industry around ‘cognitive training’ or ‘brain training’. There is a lot of debate around the efficacy of so-called ‘brain training’ programs.
One of the first things to look for when evaluating new companies that are selling ‘brain training’ programs is to see what empirical evidence they have to support their programs. In the case of the website you ask about, they refer to one paper by Jaeggi and colleagues. This is an interesting paper, but the training program evaluated in this paper is not the same, as far as I can see, as the one being sold by the company. Its important to have research that directly evaluates the programs being marketed. In my experience, the evidence base for many of the current ‘cognitive training’ or ‘brain training’ products is rather thin and few of the studies cited on websites of companies such are randomized controlled trials to evaluate their efficacy.
Furthermore, it is important to distinguish between ‘near transfer’ and ‘far transfer’. Many ‘brain training’ programs purport to yield benefits that extend beyond the skills being trained. This is known as ‘far transfer’. However, much of the evidence from studies on ‘brain training’ suggest that these activities lead to ‘near transfer’ – that is individuals improve on tasks that are very similar to those being trained. I believe most educators would be interested in ‘far transfer’ – you train on a game and it improves your overall learning abilities. However, there is currently very little evidence for such ‘far transfer’ effects.
For a big UK-based study on brain training, see:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v465/n7299/abs/nature09042.htmlFor a recent statement on brain training by a group of scientists working in this area, see:
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Duncan Astle answered on 9 May 2015:
Great question – like Daniel said, there are lots of different training programmes, and not all of the studies are particularly well design (e.g. no active control groups etc.). This cuts both ways. In some cases, some of the ‘null effects’ papers have not been that well designed either.
We have recently done a lot of work on this kind of training – http://www.jneurosci.org/content/35/16/6277.full
I also recently gave an interview on the topic to the BBC, which might give a good summary –
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/interviews/interview/1001265/In the end, I think we need to be realistic about cognitive training. It is highly unlikely to be ‘cure’ for many aspects of cognition. Furthermore, the quality of science currently lags well behind some of the claims made. However, there are possible beneficial uses that should be explored with good quality science, conducted by scientists who are genuinely independent of any of the manufacturers if these packages.
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mrholden commented on :
Thank you for the response. The idea of “near transfer” and “far transfer” is interesting.
I had heard that the likes of Soduko just make you better at doing Soduko and made little difference to other areas of cognition.
@duncan_knight commented on :
Good morning all, I am Duncan Knight, the CEO at MyCognition.
Thanks to mrholden for the question and subsequent discussion.
I thought I would register and let you know a little about our background and how we gather evidence. This is NOT a marketing response!
First off, we are working with a world class team from psychiatry, psychology & game design, please click here to see our credentials – http://www.mycognition.com/about/our-team/.
We believe that cognitive training is far more effective when trained holistically and not focused on one cognitive domain at a time as they are so intrinsically linked.
We very much appreciate the lack of governance when it comes to creating evidence from the brain training crowd. Therefore we run our studies as 2 or 3 arm trials in education and full RTC’s in our clinical work with psychiatric and neurological conditions (500+ patients included in studies now). Our studies are designed as rigorous as conditions allow.
So far we have proven our games improve cognition (near transfer) during controlled trials (1000+ students) and we have a lot of anecdotal evidence from schools reporting improvements in student/class behaviour and test results (far transfer). However, we know this is not enough and we are not snake oil salesmen!
Our latest education based study is working in conjunction with the Psychology Department at the University of Cambridge where we look at the relationship in improving maths ability by training working memory. We have created 2 specific working memory training tasks which are being tested in a 3-arm trial at 2 secondary schools involving 120 students. We will measure cognitive improvement and the students are taking a maths test too.
I would like to note that we are working with researchers at 5 Universities looking at education and health benefits of cognitive training, which in our opinion is the best way to move the science forward. While these might not be considered ‘independent’, the reality is that commercial companies are best placed to fund such activities as they are motivated to prove the case. MyCogniton and companies like ours are trying to rise above the brain training noise as we really to want to do something good for the world, which is why we are funding all the studies from our own pockets.
We are so passionate about proving the value of using cognitive training as part of a holistic programme to improve brain health; we know we are not a magic pill.
I welcome any questions regarding our work. Have a great week 🙂
Duncan.