Cognitive flexibility training in healthy aging : A game a day does not keep the doctor away

Despite the neurocognitive deterioration that is generally associated with increased age, recent studies suggest that it is possible to stave off or slow down this decline and enhance mental functioning using cognitive training. We investigated whether three-months of online brain training with professionally programmed games could help improve cognitive and subjective functioning in healthy older subjects. As earlier studies suggested cognitive flexibility training to be most effective in maintaining or enhancing functioning in healthy older adults, we specifically capitalized on this. All groups, including a mock training control group, improved equally on measures of cognitive functioning. In more detailed analyses, very little evidence could be found for individual differences predicting performance on cognitive tasks or on the training. We concluded that our computerized cognitive flexibility training did not provide any benefit for cognitive or subjective mental functioning in healthy elderly adults, compared with non-flexibility-based training or mock training. In other words, brain training did not enhance cognitive functioning. We interpreted the increase in performance observed across all conditions as effects of motivation, expectancy and test familiarity, rather than an enhancement of underlying mechanisms of functioning due to specific elements of the training. Caution is advised when interpreting the (often positive) conclusions of many earlier studies, given their frequent methodological limitations, such as lack of good control groups. Some increase in performance is to be expected, which may not be due to the brain training.