Last fall, more than 70 psychologists and neuroscientists signed a statement circulated by the Stanford Center on Longevity. Claims that it will improve your work or your child’s school performance remain similarly unproven. There is no evidence that spending 10 or 15 minutes several times a week at your keyboard, dispatching animated trains to appropriately colored stations or recalling the locations of squares on a grid, will spare you dementia. Sneed said.īroader questions of whether cognitive training works, and for whom, still generate considerable debate, given that human brains change and grow throughout life, a quality called “neuroplasticity.” “The field is far, far, far from demonstrating any reduction or delay in cognitive decline,” Dr. “The criticisms were right,” said Joel Sneed, a psychologist at Queens College and senior author of a meta-analysis on cognitive training and depression. Berkowitz said.Įven scientists who see promise in cognitive training applauded the agency’s action. But the firm settled because “we came to the realization that the most important thing we could do is focus on the future,” Mr. The company had already stopped making health and cognition claims, its new chief executive, Steve Berkowitz, said in an interview. It also accepted a $50 million judgment, all but $2 million suspended after the commission reviewed the company’s financial records. Lumosity agreed to give its one million current subscribers, who pay $14.95 a month or $79.95 annually, a quick way to opt out. She called the commission’s yearlong investigation “part of an effort to crack down on cognitive products, especially when they’re targeted to an aging population.” “The research it has done falls short because it doesn’t show any real-world benefits,” said Michelle Rusk, an F.T.C. Its complaint charged that the company could not substantiate such marketing claims. I’m more productive.” The company website stated that brain training could help “patients with brain trauma, chemofog, mild cognitive impairment and more,” adding that “healthy people have also used brain training to sharpen their daily lives and ward off cognitive decline.”Įarlier this month, the Federal Trade Commission said: No more. In one TV commercial, a man declared that with Lumosity “decisions come quicker. The company purchased hundreds of search engine keywords so that computer users seeking information on dementia, Alzheimer’s and memory would encounter its online ads. Lumosity’s ads, seemingly ubiquitous, appeared on television, radio and podcasts. “Every time you lose your keys, you think you’re losing your mind,” she said. Perrine, a freelance writer in New York, began worrying about her own mental abilities. Her mother had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, and Ms. A few years ago, Jennifer Perrine saw a television ad for Lumosity, an online brain training program, and decided she’d give it a try.
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