Do brain training apps actually raise your IQ or are they just selling you the feeling of getting smarter?
I keep seeing ads for apps that claim to boost your intelligence through daily puzzles and memory games. Some of them cite research and sound pretty convincing. But I also remember reading that most of these gains do not transfer outside the specific tasks you trained on. So what does the actual science say? Can you genuinely raise your IQ through brain training or are you just getting better at the app?
The research on this is pretty settled at this point and it is not favorable to the brain training industry. The core problem is the difference between near transfer and far transfer. Near transfer means you get better at the specific task you practiced. Far transfer means that improvement generalizes to untrained cognitive abilities, which is what you would need for a genuine IQ gain. Decades of studies on programs like dual n-back training, which was heavily hyped for a while, show near transfer reliably and far transfer barely at all. A 2014 open letter signed by over 70 cognitive scientists and neuroscientists stated directly that the claims made by brain training companies go beyond what the science supports.
What does reliably improve g-loaded performance is less glamorous. Physical exercise, adequate sleep, treatment of nutritional deficiencies, and reduction of chronic stress all have meaningful effects on cognitive functioning. These are not as marketable as a daily puzzle app but the evidence behind them is substantially stronger.
Getting better at the app is not the same as getting smarter. The industry built a billion dollar market on conflating those two things. If you want a real baseline on where your cognitive abilities actually stand, something like RIOT IQ with its 15 subtests across 6 ability domains gives you a much more honest picture than your score on a memory game you have been practicing for weeks.