Last year, brain training software and games sold for $225 million. Of those, consumers spent only $80 million while the rest came from school systems, the military, corporations, sports teams, senior facilities and other health organizations; but does it deliver what they expect?
Not according to psychologist Timothy Salthouse, director of the Salthouse Cognitive Aging Lab at the University of Virginia. "We've known for a hundred years that most training is highly specific," he said. "Training on one kind of memory does not necessarily have any kind of impact on other kinds of memory."
In other words, the skills you pick and improve in brain training games are just like the skills you learn in any other game: they are applied to the game's world only.
