A recent study published in the journal Psychological Science demonstrated that daily brain training can help strengthen willpower and promote healthy lifestyle choices in myriad ways. Researchers from the University of Amsterdam studied a group of problem drinkers who had trouble controlling their automatic impulse to drink alcohol. Researchers hypothesized that boosting cognitive functions such as working memory, which is important for maintaining and manipulating information about future goals, could indirectly help alcoholics control their impulses and drink less.

To test this theory, researchers split participants into two groups. The training group completed 25 daily sessions of a challenging working memory training regimen that involved exercises similar to Lumosity games such as Memory Matrix and Monster Garden. Participants in the control group also completed daily working memory tasks, but they only played the easiest level of each task. The results showed that the training group improved their memory capacity and also drank less alcohol than those in the control group. Moreover, the improvements were enduring: one month later, training participants who had played challenging games still had lower drinking rates than the control group.

This study shows that challenging cognitive training can help people control their impulses and make healthier choices. With further research, it may be possible to determine whether similar training can lead to improvements in other domains of life that require willpower and self-control. New studies, for example, might investigate whether brain training can help people stick to their diets or save more money for retirement.

This exciting new evidence suggests that completing daily brain training exercises like those on Lumosity may contribute to surprising lifestyle benefits beyond improving your brain—they might help you make overall smarter choices that keep the rest of your body healthy as well.

The research, conducted by Lumos Labs scientists, examined the degree to which various Lumosity cognitive training exercises transferred to improvements on standard assessments of cognitive ability. The assessments, modeled on those widely used in the clinical and research communities, were different from the training exercises and were designed to measure the efficiency of participants’ core cognitive abilities. In a general linear model analysis including data from over 1,400 individuals, cognitive training with Lumosity was associated with statistically significant improvements on all 3 untrained assessments of cognitive performance included in this analysis. Researchers found that individuals who did more training saw greater improvements on the assessments. These relationships held even when initial performance level and practice effects on tests were controlled for.

These results were based on Lumosity’s database of cognitive training and assessment performance. With over 300 million results amassed from the activities of almost 6 million monthly users, Lumosity currently has the world’s largest database of human cognitive performance.

Lumos Labs researchers, however, weren’t content to simply sit on their findings: they took the analysis a step further. They were able to predict which exercises would have the greatest impact on which outcome measures. These new findings will help Lumos Labs improve Lumosity and make it even more efficient at achieving desired cognitive benefits. In short, the data that we collect from you, the user, is going straight back to improve your Lumosity experience. Thanks for helping us gather important data about how well Lumosity works—training today will improve your mind, but also improve our ability to help you.

When you think of gamers, what comes to mind? Maybe it’s this:

The image on the left, from the animated series South Park, is just one of many depictions of gamers peppered throughout popular media. Films such as The Wizard, Grandma’s Boy, and The Last Starfighter have all helped create a negative mythos that does little to flatter the typical video game player. An abundance of literature has cropped up to protest these widely-held beliefs, including Henry Jenkins’ excellent Reality Bites: Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked. But despite repeated efforts to debunk old stereotypes, gamers continue to be portrayed as antisocial, slothful, unhealthy, mostly male, and, yes, sometimes even a little dumb.

With the first meeting of the Entertainment Software and Cognitive Therapeutics Society (ESCoNS) coming up later this month (we’ll be there presenting new research) we wanted to delve into the largest database on human cognition and share some facts about video gamers that might surprise you. We’ve compiled a comprehensive infographic that hits the reset button on 5 of the most common myths about gamers:

Click here to see all the facts and figures as we clear more than a tetris of video game myths!

Our data shows that playing games may in fact correspond with many other positive lifestyle choices. But lest you go straight back to your Playstation for another 36-hour marathon, remember that the surest path to positive results is through playing games designed for both fun and mental fitness. Studies suggest that Lumosity games can improve your attention, speed, memory, and maybe even make you the smartest gamer on the block. Why not play a few games now?

And for those of you who are curious: the data was collected from Lumosity users ages 20 – 30 who have also completed our Brain Grade survey. The “gaming group” indicated that they also played other video games (besides Lumosity training) at least once a week.

“You have to train your mind like you train your body.”

Regulars on the Lumosity blog will recall seeing advice like this before, but the above quotation is something different. Though many have likened cognitive training to exercise, Olympian Bruce Jenner was actually referring to mental training as a means for improving athletic performance. With seasons starting for football, basketball, and other sports, we’ve received many inquiries from our users about how cognitive training with tools like Lumosity can help people become better athletes.

As it turns out, researchers have long investigated mental training’s influence on a wide variety of sports and athletic pursuits. Scientists at the University of Calgary studied how training elements of visual attention could improve free-throw performance on the basketball court, and researchers at the University of Central Oklahoma looked into visual training’s ability to improve volleyball performance. With athletes and coaches looking for every possible edge, it’s no surprise that there are dozens of studies devoted to cognitive training and sports performance that target everything from soccer and cricket to golf and tennis.

Many of our users have written in testifying to Lumosity’s abilitity to give them an edge in their favorite sport. One such user, Montreal-based boxer Sylvera “Sly” Louis, was the focus of an article on brain-training and exercise in USA Today just last week. The article attributes Louis’s impressive comeback—from 625th in the world to top 200—to a training regimen with some unusually non-physical elements: “Louis spent countless hours on Lumosity, a brain-training program from Lumos Labs that includes 35 games and exercises aimed at increasing alertness, sharpening memory skills, improving concentration, and thinking faster. The boxer says he improved his reaction times. ‘Every little moment matters,’ Louis says.”

Other Lumosity users describe similar improvements. Triathlete Johnson Jia of British Columbia pairs his Lumosity training with swimming, biking, and running. Arizona Cardinals defensive end Calais Campbell uses Lumosity on his smartphone and says he does it to “keep my brain sharp.” Lumosity users even include former Olympians: cyclist Gennry Robic, who competed for Canada in the Seoul and Los Angeles Olympics, says “I exercise my body, now it is also part of my routine to exercise my brain and it feels GREAT!!!”

So if you’re an athlete thinking about using Lumosity to get that competitive edge this season, rest assured that you’re in good company. And if you’ve already discovered ways in which Lumosity has improved your game, reply to this post and share your own success story!

We really appreciate the time Karen took to think carefully about Lumosity, and encourage our fans to learn more about her thoughts here. After you’ve read what she has to say, let us know your thoughts as well!

Thank you again, Karen!

Stay bright,

The Lumosity Team

Who wouldn’t like to be smarter? Neuroscientists once believed that this was impossible — the accepted truth was that you were born with a set level of intelligence, and that was that. Fortunately, we now know better. Empowering information about the brain’s ability to change in response to the right challenges and stimuli have come to light. Just this year, 3 articles showing the benefits of cognitive training with Lumosity were published in peer-reviewed journals. These articles demonstrate that Lumosity training can engage your innate neuroplasticity and help make you smarter.

In the first article by Dr. Shelli Kesler, a professor at the Stanford School of Medicine, cancer survivors used Lumosity to help them recover from cancer-related cognitive deficits. Participants showed significantly improved performance on tests of processing speed, cognitive flexibility, and memory. In addition, Dr. Kesler used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to visually demonstrate enhanced activation in the prefrontal cortex of participants’ brains.

In a second article by Dr. Kesler’s group, participants with Turner’s Syndrome — a genetic disorder known to affect math ability — trained with a special Lumosity Math Tutor course. Not only did these participants improve in core math skills, but they also demonstrated improvements in basic cognitive abilities such as executive function. Critically, brain areas crucial to math processes showed enhanced activation, as shown by fMRI analysis.

And this summer, researchers from Lumos Labs published the first ever study demonstrating that normal, healthy adults could use online cognitive training to enhance memory and attention. Published in the Mensa Research Journal, this study showed that participants who did Lumosity training 20 minutes a day for 5 weeks saw ~10% improvements in working memory and ~20% improvements in visual attention. Control participants who did not train did not improve.

Improvements in each study were seen on tests of transfer of training — tasks that participants had never seen during training. In other words, people improved such core underlying cognitive abilities as processing speed, attention, and working memory. These core abilities are the building blocks of intelligence; improving them means you really are getting smarter, not just better at doing one task. This new science is great news for all of us — we have the power to make ourselves smarter.

Cognitive training can enhance working memory and the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine, according to a study published recently in the journal Science. Researchers based out of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden compared cognitive performance and dopamine activation in training participants, who did 5 weeks of cognitive training, and control participants, who did not receive training. Compared to pre-training levels, training participants saw both improved performance on a test of working memory and increased levels of dopamine release. No such changes were seen in the control group.

This result shows that cognitive training with exercises similar to those on Lumosity can change the way the brain works at a fundamental chemical level. Indeed, we’ve known for several years that the right kind of cognitive training can enhance brain functions like working memory.

But what makes this study novel is the implication that dopamine plays a role in these important brain changes. Dopamine is a type of neurotransmitter — a chemical used for communication between brain cells — that is critical for many brain functions, and particularly for signalling reward. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter released when the brain signals, “good job, do that again!” The brain releases dopamine in response to all kinds of pleasurable experiences — such as eating a delicious meal — and is critical for learning.

It’s very exciting to see that cognitive training can enhance the functioning of this crucial neurochemical. Do some Lumosity training today and you may experience the effects for yourself.

Participants in the study were randomly assigned to one of two groups: a training intervention group or a waitlist control group. Intervention group participants did Lumosity training 20 minutes a day for 5 weeks. At the end of the period, they saw significant improvements on tests of visual attention and working memory (20% and 10%, respectively). Control participants, on the other hand, did not undergo Lumosity training and did not improve.

This study goes above and beyond others of its kind in building a persuasive case for cognitive training for the general population. Firstly, the experiment used a control group to demonstrate that these improvements were not based on practice effects. Furthermore, the standard assessments of attention and memory used to test the transfer of training effects were distinct from the tasks used for training–thus indicating that cognitive benefits went beyond game-specific abilities. Cognitive improvements were transferable to core cognitive abilities.

The implications of this study are clear and compelling: Lumosity training can improve core underlying mental abilities, abilities that transfer to myriad aspects of our everyday lives. We engage visual attention to focus on our environment, whether it be the webpage we’re reading or the cars on the road. We use working memory for a wide variety of tasks, from remembering the grocery list to solving a complex problem at work. Enhancing these abilities can make you more efficient at the things you do all the time.

Training with Lumosity can enhance cognitive function and change the way the brain processes math, according to a study published this week in the journal Neuropsychological Rehabilitation. Dr. Shelli Kesler, Assistant Professor at Stanford University Medical School, led an investigation into the effects of training with Lumosity’s Math Tutor course. The new course, specially designed in collaboration with Dr. Kesler, comprises various exercises targeted to improve speed of processing, cognitive flexibility, and number sense. Dr. Kesler and colleagues found that the course can improve cognition and math skills in girls with Turner’s syndrome — a genetic disorder known to disrupt cognitive functioning and produce deficits in math ability.

Participants exercised with Lumosity Math Tutor for 20 minutes a day, 5 days a week, over the course of 6 weeks. They were tested before and after training with both performance-based evaluations and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scanning techniques. Participants saw clinically significant improvements in processing speed, cognitive flexibility, visual attention, and math skills. Additionally, brain scans taken during a math task performed before and after training showed changes in neural activity in brain areas related to executive cognitive control and the dynamic control of attention*. These changes were consistent with increased math skills expertise and enhanced cognitive control in these participants.

*Panel above: areas in red represent increased activity; areas in blue represent decreased activity.

This is just one of the latest Human Cognition Project findings that shows how Lumosity training can functionally change the brain. Dedicated training is capable of making the brain more effective at the everyday tasks — like basic math —  that we regularly rely on. Consider signing up for a training course or two today!

The Teen Talk Barbie, which hit shelves in 1992, had 270 phrases for its computer chip to choose from, but none of them ignited more controversy than the little quip above. For many, the sentiment expressed by this popular doll epitomized two popular beliefs in the United States and Canada: not only that “math class is tough,” but also that kids in North American schools just aren’t as good at mathematics as their international counterparts.

And it’s a view that isn’t just coming from dolls, either: from Futurama to The Colbert Report to US Presidents, many have lamented North America’s relatively dismal placing when it comes to quantitative reasoning.

This isn’t a new viewpoint, of course. Every four years since 1995, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) has shown that students from Asia outperform US students in assessments of math skills.

With the 2011 TIMSS fast approaching, we found ourselves curious as to whether or not we could replicate this study. To perform this kind of analysis, of course, our researchers would need access to a massive and international database of performance results.

Thankfully we have just such a dataset.

Here at Lumosity, we work hard to build tools that enable learners of all ages to improve their problem-solving ability and other cognitive skills. In order to improve these exercises, we devote considerable resources to analyzing the data produced by our users as they train. And since our millions of users come from all over the world, the resulting dataset represents a unique opportunity to explore how different countries stack up when it comes to different measures of cognitive performance.

In this case, we decided to analyze performance scores for Chalkboard Challenge, a popular Lumosity exercise in which a player reviews two numbers or operations, and then decides which one is greater (or if they’re equal). This type of quantitative reasoning represents a fundamental component of the skills reviewed in the TIMSS.

For starters, here’s the average baseline performance on Chalkboard Challenge in 22 countries around the world from a sample of 36,979 individuals:

Overall, our results agree with the latest TIMSS: every country in the “Asia” group outperforms every country in the “North America” group. Of course, since education and life experience play a huge part in mathematical performance, we also looked at how individuals in East Asian countries performed versus those in North American countries when education was factored in:

Good news for those of you thinking about heading back to school! Individuals with more education performed better at Chalkboard Challenge than those without it. A North American individual with a college degree thus performed better than someone from East Asia without one. That said, individuals from East Asia with any amount of college education tended to outperform their North American counterparts, regardless of education.

But back to why these folks are using Lumosity in the first place: to improve the abilities they’re training. After all, people play Chalkboard Challenge and our other problem-solving games to augment core quantitative skills. In examining the data, we discovered that everyone can get better at Chalkboard Challenge — and, more importantly, the core abilities underlying the exercise — with practice. Much, much, better, in fact.

So how many times does an individual in North America need to train with Chalkboard Challenge before he or she reaches the scores achieved in East Asia?

Well, it turns out that achievement differs greatly based on education. A median high school student in North America needs to train with Chalkboard Challenge 33 times to catch up with a median high school student in East Asia. Have a PhD and live in North America? In that case, you only need to train 11 times to match East Asian levels.

These findings are interesting for two reasons. First, it appears that a substantial disparity in quantitative comparison ability does exist between North American and East Asian players. Thankfully that’s an issue that more than a few educators, including the people behind the TIMSS, hope to solve.

The other reason, however, relates to the core mission of Lumosity: no matter who you are, you can significantly improve your cognitive skills with training. That’s good news for students — and anyone who wants to improve their mathematical ability — not only in North America, but around the world.