Brain Training Exercises Won’t Boost Intelligence, But Could Improve Memory

The Huffington Post:

Brain training exercises can boost your memory, but don’t expect them to make you any smarter, a new study says.

Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Arizona State University, Michigan State University and Purdue University found that brain training seems to improve working memory capacity (the ability to keep or quickly recall information under distraction), but doesn’t seem to have any effect on general fluid intelligence (the ability to practice complex reasoning skills and solve new problems).

Past research had suggested that there was a correlation between the two, with some hypothesizing that boosting one would then boost the other. But correlation doesn’t mean they’re the same thing, researchers said, similar to the concepts of height and weight.

“Height and weight in human beings are also strongly correlated but few reasonable people would assume that height and weight are the same variable,” study researcher Randall Engle, of the Georgia Institute of Technology, said in a statement. “If they were, gaining weight would make you taller and losing weight would make you shorter — those of us who gain and lose weight periodically can attest to the fact that that is not true.”

Read the whole story: The Huffington Post