Can You Train Your Brain? What the Research Actually Shows
Your brain does change with practice, but mostly in ways tied to what you actually practise. Brain-training games tend to make you better at those games, with limited evidence that the gains carry over to everyday thinking. A growth mindset is useful here not as a promise of unlimited improvement, but as a habit of responding to difficulty with effort, better strategies and feedback.
Two ways of responding to a hard task
A hard task branches into two paths. In the fixed response, difficulty is read as a lack of ability, which leads to avoiding the task, giving up, and ignoring feedback. In the growth response, difficulty is read as a signal to adjust, which leads to more effort, trying a new strategy, and asking for feedback.
Illustrative model, not measured data.
Yes, the brain changes with experience
Neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to change its structure and function in response to experience. Two well-known studies are often used to illustrate it. Maguire and colleagues (2000) found differences in the hippocampus, a region involved in spatial memory, in London taxi drivers who had learned the city's complex street layout. Draganski and colleagues (2004) found that adults who learned to juggle showed temporary changes in grey matter in areas related to visual motion, which declined again when they stopped practising.
Both studies are small, and neither shows that any kind of practice improves the brain in general. What they do show is that the adult brain is not fixed: sustained, specific practice leaves measurable traces.
For a more detailed look at plasticity and beliefs about learning, see our partner article on neuroplasticity and growth mindset.
What brain-training apps can and cannot do
Commercial brain-training programs often suggest that a few minutes of games a day will make you sharper in general. In 2016, Simons and colleagues published a large review of the evidence cited by brain-training companies. They found extensive evidence that training improves performance on the trained tasks, less evidence for improvement on closely related tasks, and little evidence that training improves everyday cognitive performance.
Researchers call this the transfer problem. Getting faster at a memory game mostly makes you faster at that memory game. It does not automatically make you better at reading a textbook, solving a maths problem or remembering names at work.
That does not make games worthless. They can be fun and engaging. But if your goal is to get better at something specific, practising that specific thing is usually the more direct route.
Viral IQ tests and brain challenges
Social media is full of quick 'IQ tests', 'only geniuses can solve this' puzzles and brain challenges. They can be entertaining, but they are not validated measures, and the framing often encourages a fixed view of ability: either you are clever enough to see the answer at once, or you are not.
A puzzle you cannot solve in ten seconds tells you very little about your intelligence. It may tell you that you have not seen this type of puzzle before, that you were reading on a small screen while distracted, or that the puzzle was designed to mislead. With a little practice, most people get much better at a particular puzzle type, which is exactly what transfer research would predict.
Our page on social media, self-comparison and mindset looks at how feeds make other people's abilities look effortless.
Where growth mindset fits in
Growth mindset, as described by Carol Dweck, is about beliefs: whether you see intelligence and talent as something you can develop. It is not a claim that anyone can become anything with enough willpower, and it is not the same as brain training.
The diagram above illustrates the core idea. When a task becomes hard, a fixed interpretation ('I'm not smart enough') tends to lead to avoiding the task, hiding mistakes and ignoring feedback. A growth interpretation ('I need another approach') tends to lead to effort, a change of strategy and seeking feedback. Effort alone is not enough: repeating an ineffective strategy harder rarely helps.
The evidence for growth mindset interventions is real but modest. Meta-analyses by Sisk and colleagues (2018) found small average effects on achievement, and the national study by Yeager and colleagues (2019) found benefits mainly for lower-achieving students, depending on school context. That is a more cautious message than many popular summaries suggest, and our page on criticism and limitations goes through the debate.
Don't forget the basics
Before investing time in apps, it is worth remembering the conditions that make learning possible in the first place. Sleep is one of them: our partner site explains how sleep affects attention, memory and thinking, and our own article on sleep and growth mindset looks at how rest and beliefs about ability interact.
Practical ideas to try
• Practise the actual skill you want to improve, in a form close to how you will use it.
• When you get stuck, change something concrete: break the task into smaller steps, use an example, or try a different method.
• Ask for specific feedback and use it on the next attempt.
• Replace labels such as 'I'm not a maths person' with a description of what you cannot do yet.
• Treat online IQ challenges as entertainment, not as information about who you are.
Frequently asked questions
Do brain-training apps make you smarter? They reliably make you better at the trained tasks. A major review found little evidence that the gains transfer to everyday thinking or general intelligence.
What is neuroplasticity? It is the brain's capacity to change with experience. Studies of taxi drivers and people learning to juggle show that specific, sustained practice can be associated with measurable changes in the brain.
Is a growth mindset the same as believing anyone can be a genius? No. A growth mindset means believing that ability can develop with effort, good strategies and support. It does not deny that people differ or that improvement takes time.
How do you see your own ability?
The free 16-statement Mindset Test shows where your beliefs about intelligence and talent sit on a fixed-to-growth continuum. It is a reflection tool, not an IQ test, and takes only a few minutes.
Sources
Draganski, B., Gaser, C., Busch, V., Schuierer, G., Bogdahn, U., & May, A. (2004). Changes in grey matter induced by training. Nature, 427, 311–312. doi:10.1038/427311a
Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Random House.
Maguire, E. A., Gadian, D. G., Johnsrude, I. S., Good, C. D., Ashburner, J., Frackowiak, R. S. J., & Frith, C. D. (2000). Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 97(8), 4398–4403. doi:10.1073/pnas.070039597
Simons, D. J., Boot, W. R., Charness, N., Gathercole, S. E., Chabris, C. F., Hambrick, D. Z., & Stine-Morrow, E. A. L. (2016). Do "brain-training" programs work? Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 17(3), 103–186. doi:10.1177/1529100616661983
Sisk, V. F., Burgoyne, A. P., Sun, J., Butler, J. L., & Macnamara, B. N. (2018). To what extent and under which circumstances are growth mind-sets important to academic achievement? Two meta-analyses. Psychological Science, 29(4), 549–571. doi:10.1177/0956797617739704
Yeager, D. S., et al. (2019). A national experiment reveals where a growth mindset improves achievement. Nature, 573, 364–369. doi:10.1038/s41586-019-1466-y
Part of our Mind, Brain & Sleep series
Mindset Test is one of three free sites from the same team. Each looks at learning from a different angle.