What does research say about cognitive training?
Some structured cognitive-training programs have improved the skills people practiced, and major health guidance considers cognitive training as one possible part of dementia-risk reduction. That does not mean every brain game has the same effect.
Did you know?
The World Health Organization’s 2026 dementia-risk guidance includes cognitive training and cognitive stimulation among interventions considered for adults with normal cognition or mild cognitive impairment. The guidance is broader than online games and does not establish that Daily Brain Lab prevents Alzheimer’s disease.
Try a challenge: our games exercise skills such as recall, attention, ordering and reasoning. They are recreational activities, not medical treatment or a validated cognitive assessment.
What has actually been studied?
The ACTIVE randomized trial assigned 2,832 adults aged 65–94 to memory, reasoning, visual speed-of-processing training, or a control group. It is an important example of structured cognitive training research, but its interventions are not identical to the games on this website.
Another randomized trial of 681 adults aged 50 and older studied computerized visual speed-of-processing training and measured processing-speed and related cognitive outcomes. Again, this supports studying specific training methods — not treating all online puzzles as equivalent.
Sources
- World Health Organization — Risk reduction of cognitive decline and dementia: guidelines, second edition (2026)
- WHO — summary of the 2026 guideline update
- JAMA / PubMed — ACTIVE randomized controlled trial (2,832 older adults)
- PLOS ONE / PubMed — randomized visual speed-of-processing training trial
Research evolves. We link to the original guidance and study records so you can inspect the evidence yourself.