for a couple of years and while there were various tables and percentages of different age groups purportedly showing my supposed progress, some of it was kind of fuzzy and I became skeptical. The "progress" wasn't evident in real life away from their graphs.

in your cell phone. I never put one in and in a company of 400 people I was known for my memory and I'm 64 years old. You have to use your memory at all times. It makes your mind work. I used to memorize the encyclopedia.

And, al-Betchya, it's not getting sued directly for that either.

I don't see their ads on the Science Channel anymore where it used to be their ads were a third of the SC ad revenue at least.

Never claim direct medical benefit without doing FDA trials and approval. That was a massive legal mistake by the company, and people started calling them out on it from day 1.


But it's important to remember that Lumisity's mistake was a legal one. Brain plasticity is a solidly proven medical fact. The more you use your brain, the better it is at being used. Bad at math? Do more math and you'll get better at it. Have trouble matching patterns? Do pattern matching exercises daily and your ability will improve. Bad at remembering numbers? Start repeating a new set of numbers every day, and force yourself to recall all of a weeks numbers at the end of a week. Within a few weeks, you'll get a LOT better at it.

And yes, the research proves that it does the other way too. If you never need to remember numbers, your brains ability to remember number patterns will decline. The same with pattern matching, map reading, or mathematics. Your brain doesn't waste neurons on skills it doesn't use.

Lumosity's basic concept was sound. Force your brain though a series of regular "exercises" to beat cognitive decline or to improve your cognitive abilities. Their problem was that they flouted legal requirements for medical claims, by claiming the unprovable.

I can say, legally and without question, that reading books improves your cognitive ability. That has been solidly proven by science. What I cannot do is sell you a thousand page tome with the promise that reading it will make you smarter or improve your IQ. Why not? Because I can't show the medical benefit from my particular book. There is no way for me to medically demonstrate that my specific book lead to the growth of new brain cells...and that's what is required under American law in order to claim medical benefit.

Lumosity claimed that their 40 games would make you smarter and fight cognitive decline. While they may do so (and while they PROBABLY do, to a degree), that's not a claim they were allowed to make.