ResearchPod Summary
This study investigated whether a three-week intervention using computerized brain training games (BTG) could improve cognitive performance in healthy young adults. Additionally, the researchers sought to explore potential associations between cognitive improvements and specific blood markers, namely brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and apolipoprotein (APOE).
Researchers recruited 51 healthy volunteers who were randomized into an active group and a control group. The active group engaged in Lumosity training (targeting attention, memory, and executive function) for 15 minutes daily, at least seven days a week, for three weeks. The control group performed no such training. Cognitive performance was measured before and after the three-week period using the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB), which assesses various domains such as motor speed, attention-switching, and pattern recognition memory. Furthermore, the researchers analyzed plasma levels of BDNF and APOE to determine if changes in cognition correlated with these biological indicators.
The active group showed a statistically significant improvement in their Lumosity performance index and performed better on several CANTAB assessments compared to the baseline, specifically in tasks measuring attention-switching and motor latency. The control group exhibited no significant improvements. Regarding blood markers, the study found a positive correlation between APOE levels and pattern recognition memory, and a negative correlation between APOE levels and motor response latency. No significant relationship was found between BDNF levels and cognitive markers in this study.
While there is ongoing debate regarding the efficacy of brain training, this study adds to the growing literature suggesting that commercial digital interventions can enhance specific cognitive processes like processing speed and attention in healthy adults. By incorporating blood markers, the research also attempts to bridge the gap between behavioral cognitive training and the underlying biological mechanisms, although further large-scale, longitudinal research is required to confirm these findings.
Alex: Faster responses after brain training are not the same as proof that brain training works. In this study, healthy young adults responded faster on attention and motor tests after using Lumosity, but a crucial comparison was missing.
Sam: That sounds like a gap between an encouraging result and a convincing treatment effect. Whose study are we discussing?
Alex: It’s a randomized training study by Abdulrahman Al-Thaqib and colleagues, published in Medical Science Monitor Basic Research in 2018. The volunteers were studied in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The results suggest short-term improvements, particularly in response speed, rather than a general improvement in memory.
Sam: For anyone designing cognitive interventions, that distinction changes what counts as success. It also matters if you want to apply these findings to aging.
Alex: We’ll look at the separate tests behind the claim, the comparison the analysis leaves unanswered, and what the blood measurements add.
Sam: Start with the unresolved question. Were earlier studies already showing that these games improve cognition?
Alex: The authors describe mixed evidence. Some studies reported gains in attention, memory, processing speed, and other abilities. Others found no positive cognitive effects. A central challenge was whether improvements carried over to tasks people hadn’t practiced.
Sam: Getting better at a familiar game is one thing. Did this study assess anything beyond the games themselves?
Alex: Yes. That’s the useful idea in its design. Participants trained with Lumosity, but researchers also assessed them with the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery, or CANTAB. That’s a computerized set of cognitive tests, separate from the training application.
Sam: So what did participants actually do, and who ended up in the analysis?
Alex: The final training group had fifty-one healthy volunteers. They played games targeting abilities such as attention, memory, and speed. The control group had twenty-one volunteers and received no training.
Sam: Were these people representative of the older adults the paper’s background discusses?
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Alex: No. Their average age was about twenty-five. The researchers screened for cognitive impairment and excluded people with conditions including dementia and depression. This was a study of healthy, mostly young adults, not a test of treatment for cognitive decline.
Sam: What did the training commitment look like? That matters when we think about whether people would stick with it.
Alex: Training lasted three weeks, with daily play. The abstract describes about fifteen minutes a day, while the methods give a wider range of session lengths. Participants also received remote support through routine contact, phone, and email.
Sam: Support can help people finish, but did the analysis include people who failed to keep up?
Alex: No. Participants who missed training or didn’t complete the assessment period were excluded from the final analyses. The authors say compliance problems contributed to the unequal group sizes. So these results describe completers, not everyone initially assigned.
Sam: Let’s separate the outcomes. What improved within the application, and what improved outside it?
Alex: The application’s performance index improved across training. That combines scores across the abilities Lumosity targets. More relevant to transfer, several response-time measures also improved on the separate attention-switching test, which assesses performance when attention must switch.
Sam: Give me a concrete result from that test. How large was the change?
Alex: Average correct-response time fell from about six hundred milliseconds before training to about five hundred twelve afterward. The study reported that change as statistically significant. Response times also fell under several conditions within the same attention test.
Sam: Those conditions sound related, rather than independent demonstrations across entirely different abilities. Did anything else change?
Alex: The motor screening task, which measures response time and pointing accuracy, also showed faster correct responses. But pointing error did not significantly improve. And the pattern recognition memory test, which assesses recognition of visual patterns, showed no significant improvement in percentage correct.
Sam: So the clearest result is speed, not a broad improvement across speed, accuracy, and memory.
Alex: That’s the more defensible reading of the reported outcomes. The discussion uses broader language about cognitive improvement. But the directly reported changes are concentrated in attention-related response times and motor speed.
Sam: Now to the crucial comparison. If controls didn’t improve, doesn’t that establish that training made the difference?
Alex: The controls showed no statistically significant changes on these assessments. But the authors explicitly acknowledge analyzing changes within each group, rather than comparing changes between groups. A significant change in the training group and a nonsignificant change in controls do not themselves establish a significant difference between groups.
Sam: So the missing answer is whether the groups changed differently, not whether one group crossed a significance threshold.
Alex: That’s the key limitation. It matters because parts of the abstract and discussion sound comparative. The analysis described supports a narrower statement: the training group improved from its own baseline on several speed measures.
Sam: Participants also knew whether they were training. Was anything done to limit assessment bias?
Alex: The paper calls the study non-blinded because participants knew their assignments. However, it says the psychometrician conducting the assessments and the principal investigator were blinded to group assignment. That’s a useful safeguard, but the control group still had no alternative activity.
Sam: Which means the comparison didn’t separate the games from the experience of taking part in an active training program.
Alex: It didn’t isolate those possibilities. Add the small sample, exclusion of non-completers, and short follow-up, and I’d treat this as preliminary evidence. It gives a signal worth investigating, not a settled estimate of the application’s benefit.
Sam: What was new, then, beyond testing another brain-training program? The paper also measured blood proteins.
Alex: The authors describe this as the first study of brain training games in Saudi Arabian participants. They also emphasize combining training with measurements of apolipoprotein E, a blood protein, and brain-derived neurotrophic factor, a protein involved in maintaining neurons and supporting their capacity to change.
Sam: Did those measurements explain the faster responses, or simply accompany them?
Alex: They showed associations, not an explanation. Higher apolipoprotein E levels were associated with shorter motor response times and higher pattern recognition accuracy. The results did not report significant associations between brain-derived neurotrophic factor and the cognitive measures.
Sam: So there isn’t evidence here that training improved cognition by changing either protein.
Alex: No demonstrated mechanism. There’s also a reporting tension: the conclusion mentions correlations involving both markers, while the results report no significant finding for the neurotrophic factor. I would follow the specific results rather than that broader concluding sentence.
Sam: And the aging argument remains a motivation, rather than something this experiment tested.
Alex: Yes. The authors call for longer studies and research in older adults and patients. This study cannot tell us whether the observed speed gains last, help everyday functioning, or reduce age-related cognitive decline.
Sam: Who should read the full document, and where should they start?
Alex: Researchers studying cognitive training, behavioral interventions, or blood markers of cognition. Start with the cognitive assessment results alongside the statistical analysis section. Then read the discussion’s acknowledgment that the analysis was within groups, and its limitations on duration and generalizability.
Sam: And what should everyone else remember when they hear that brain training improved cognition?
Alex: In this sample, training was followed by faster responses, not demonstrated broad cognitive improvement. Faster after training does not, by itself, mean faster because of training.
Sam: Keep that distinction with you.