ArticleThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2017
No Effect of Commercial Cognitive Training on Brain Activity, Choice Behavior, or Cognitive Performance.
Article in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 50 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
50 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 132 citations in OpenAlex.
- Domain-general behavioral gains and neural correlates of cognitive training in healthy populations: a neuroimaging meta-analysis.Behavioral and brain functions : BBF · 2026Pooled it
- Effectiveness of Computerized Cognitive Training Programs (CCTP) with Game-like Features in Children with or without Neuropsychological Disorders: a Meta-Analytic Investigation.Neuropsychology review · 2020Pooled it
- Behavioral trainings and manipulations to reduce delay discounting: A systematic review.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2019Pooled it
- Practice makes perfect, but to what end? Computerised brain training has limited cognitive benefits in healthy ageing.Psychological research · 2025Trial
- Cognitive control training with domain-general response inhibition does not change children's brains or behavior.Nature neuroscience · 2024Trial
- An event-related potential (ERP) study of the transfer of response inhibition training to interference control.Experimental brain research · 2021Trial
- Improvement of Working Memory is a Mechanism for Reductions in Delay Discounting Among Mid-Age Individuals in an Urban Medically Underserved Area.Annals of behavioral medicine : a publication of the Society of Behavioral Medicine · 2019Trial
- Review
- Cognitive network plasticity across divergent aging trajectories: an exploratory graph-theoretic study.GeroScience · 2026Article
- Neural Correlates of Cognitive Gains Induced by Commercially Available Cognitive Training Programs: A Meta-Analysis of Neuroimaging Studies.Brain sciences · 2026Review
- A systematic review protocol for slow-paced breathing in healthy populations: Impacts on cognition and insights into mechanisms of action.Systematic reviews · 2025Article
- Unresolved ethical questions of mHealth apps for Alzheimer's disease prevention.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2025Article
- A structural MRI marker predicts individual differences in impulsivity and classifies patients with behavioral-variant frontotemporal dementia from matched controls.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Functional brain network properties correlate with individual risk tolerance in young adults.Heliyon · 2024Article
- Cognitive tasks, anatomical MRI, and functional MRI data evaluating the construct of self-regulation.Scientific data · 2024Article
- Multivariate analysis of multimodal brain structure predicts individual differences in risk and intertemporal preference.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Behavioral Interventions Can Improve Brain Injury-Induced Deficits in Behavioral Flexibility and Impulsivity Linked to Impaired Reward-Feedback Beta Oscillations.Journal of neurotrauma · 2024Article
- Effects of Cognitively Stimulating Activities on the Cognitive Functioning of Older People with Mild Cognitive Impairment: A Meta-analysis.Acta medica Philippina · 2024Article
- Anhedonia and Delay Discounting: Differing Patterns of Brain-Behavior Relationships in Healthy Control Participants Versus Individuals With Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2024Article
- Reduced cortical complexity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex is associated with a greater preference for risky and immediate rewards.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
13 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Increased preference for immediate over delayed rewards and for risky over certain rewards has been associated with unhealthy behavioral choices. Motivated by evidence that enhanced cognitive control can shift choice behavior away from immediate and risky rewards, we tested whether training executive cognitive function could influence choice behavior and brain responses. In this randomized controlled trial, 128 young adults (71 male, 57 female) participated in 10 weeks of training with either a commercial web-based cognitive training program or web-based video games that do not specifically target executive function or adapt the level of difficulty throughout training. Pretraining and post-training, participants completed cognitive assessments and functional magnetic resonance imaging during performance of the following validated decision-making tasks: delay discounting (choices between smaller rewards now vs larger rewards in the future) and risk sensitivity (choices between larger riskier rewards vs smaller certain rewards). Contrary to our hypothesis, we found no evidence that cognitive training influences neural activity during decision-making; nor did we find effects of cognitive training on measures of delay discounting or risk sensitivity. Participants in the commercial training condition improved with practice on the specific tasks they performed during training, but participants in both conditions showed similar improvement on standardized cognitive measures over time. Moreover, the degree of improvement was comparable to that observed in individuals who were reassessed without any training whatsoever. Commercial adaptive cognitive training appears to have no benefits in healthy young adults above those of standard video games for measures of brain activity, choice behavior, or cognitive performance.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.