In 2014, two groups of scientists published open letters on the efficacy of brain-training interventions, or "brain games," for improving cognition. The first letter, a consensus statement from an international group of more than 70 scientists, claimed that brain games do not provide a scientifically grounded way to improve cognitive functioning or to stave off cognitive decline. Several months later, an international group of 133 scientists and practitioners countered that the literature is replete with demonstrations of the benefits of brain training for a wide variety of cognitive and everyday activities. How could two teams of scientists examine the same literature and come to conflicting "consensus" views about the effectiveness of brain training?In part, the disagreement might result from different standards used when evaluating the evidence. To date, the field has lacked a comprehensive review of the brain-training literature, one that examines both the quantity and the quality of the evidence according to a well-defined set of best practices. This article provides such a review, focusing exclusively on the use of cognitive tasks or games as a means to enhance performance on other tasks. We specify and justify a set of best practices for such brain-training interventions and then use those standards to evaluate all of the published peer-reviewed intervention studies cited on the websites of leading brain-training companies listed on Cognitive Training Data (www.cognitivetrainingdata.org), the site hosting the open letter from brain-training proponents. These citations presumably represent the evidence that best supports the claims of effectiveness.Based on this examination, we find extensive evidence that brain-training interventions improve performance on the trained tasks, less evidence that such interventions improve performance on closely related tasks, and little evidence that training enhances performance on distantly related tasks or that training improves everyday cognitive performance. We also find that many of the published intervention studies had major shortcomings in design or analysis that preclude definitive conclusions about the efficacy of training, and that none of the cited studies conformed to all of the best practices we identify as essential to drawing clear conclusions about the benefits of brain training for everyday activities. We conclude with detailed recommendations for scientists, funding agencies, and policymakers that, if adopted, would lead to better evidence regarding the efficacy of brain-training interventions.

中文翻译：

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“脑力训练”计划有效吗？

2014 年，两组科学家发表了关于大脑训练干预或“大脑游戏”对提高认知效果的公开信。第一封信是一个由 70 多名科学家组成的国际小组的共识声明，声称脑力游戏不能提供一种有科学依据的方法来改善认知功能或避免认知能力下降。几个月后，一个由 133 名科学家和实践者组成的国际小组反驳说，文献中充斥着证明大脑训练对各种认知和日常活动的好处。两个科学家团队如何检查相同的文献并就大脑训练的有效性得出相互矛盾的“共识”观点？部分地，分歧可能是由于评估证据时使用的不同标准造成的。迄今为止，该领域缺乏对大脑训练文献的全面审查，即根据一套明确定义的最佳实践来检查证据的数量和质量。本文提供了这样的评论，专门关注使用认知任务或游戏作为提高其他任务表现的手段。我们为此类大脑训练干预指定并证明了一组最佳实践，然后使用这些标准来评估在认知训练数据 (www.cognitivetrainingdata) 上列出的领先大脑训练公司的网站上引用的所有已发表的经同行评审的干预研究.org），该网站托管大脑训练支持者的公开信。这些引用可能代表了最能支持有效性主张的证据。基于这项检查，我们发现大量证据表明大脑训练干预可以提高训练任务的表现，较少证据表明此类干预可以提高密切相关任务的表现，并且几乎没有证据训练提高了远相关任务的表现，或者训练提高了日常认知表现。我们还发现，许多已发表的干预研究在设计或分析方面存在重大缺陷，无法得出关于培训效果的明确结论，并且没有一项引用的研究符合我们认为对得出明确结论至关重要的所有最佳实践大脑训练对日常活动的好处。