Most of us, whether we admit it or not, would probably like to be a little smarter. After all, who wouldn’t want to be a chess whizz, or at the heart of the cut and thrust in every dinner party debate?
But beyond being born with the right genetics and into an environment that fosters learning from an early age, you might wonder whether boosting your brain’s performance is even possible. And if so, how?
Brain-training games claim to be one such way. Much like how people who want bigger muscles head to the gym, people who want to pump up their intellect turn to brain-training games.
They’ve become increasingly popular in recent years, partly because apps and smartphones have put them within easy reach at all times, but also because the idea behind them is simple and compelling: play this fun game for a few minutes a day and it’ll make you smarter.
Sadly, the evidence base for the efficacy of brain-training games is shaky at best.
A major study published in 2018 put them to the test by training participants on a simple game that involved tracking a token as it moved behind a set of squares. With practice, people got much better at the task.
Yet when they were tested on a similar challenge – remembering a short string of numbers – those gains vanished. The training didn’t transfer from the game to the task.
“When thinking about brain training, as it was advertised,” says Prof Bobby Stojanoski, the researcher who led the study, “we don’t see any improvements.”
Other research backs up Stojanoski’s findings, but it’s not the first time the purported benefits of such games have been called into question – in 2016, the US Federal Trade Commission even fined Lumosity, a leading brain-training company, $2m (£1.5m) after ruling that its claims about boosting everyday performance and preventing cognitive decline were deceptive.
“This leaves a number of questions,” Stojanoski says. “We know our brains are plastic and can improve their performance. So it doesn’t entirely shut the door on different avenues for cognitive improvement.”
One of those avenues, by a remarkable coincidence, might be lifting weights for real.
Brain power
Picture someone with a high IQ and you’re unlikely to imagine someone with broad shoulders, bulging biceps and a healthy glow from exercising outdoors. No, the visual cliché for intellectual types is a pale, skinny, weakling who gets picked last in gym class.
Yet such stereotypes are not only outdated, they’re also unhelpful. Especially as exercise might be one of the most effective ways to boost your mental abilities.
One analysis of several studies, published in 2024, found that giving children exercise routines increased their IQ scores by an average of four points. Crucially, the gains appeared regardless of the child’s starting IQ or how long the intervention lasted.
Four points might not sound that much, but as the lead author of the analysis, Dr Javier Salvador Morales, put it, “A mean increase of four IQ points is meaningful from a population perspective.
To contextualise it, previous studies have shown that one additional year of formal education typically leads to gains of around one to five IQ points.
“So, the effect we observed is comparable to the intellectual benefits associated with an extra year of schooling.”
He’s careful to add that it isn’t a magic bullet: “This doesn’t mean that any isolated physical activity will automatically produce such changes, but rather that structured, regular exercise programmes can meaningfully and measurably improve children’s intelligence.”
Why does exercise help? Its benefits for the brain are wide-ranging.
MRI scans have shown that it can promote the birth of new neurons in the hippocampus – the part of the brain essential for learning and memory – increase the number of connections throughout the brain, enhance the formation of new blood vessels and fend off the proteins linked to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.
Part of this comes down to improved blood flow and oxygen delivery, giving the brain the energy it needs to operate efficiently. Exercise also triggers the release of neurotransmitters and hormones that support healthy brain function.
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Train of thought
Is any one type of exercise better than the rest? Right now, that question is difficult to answer, partly because much of the research focuses on older adults, which means moderate activities such as walking dominate.
One 2024 study, for instance, found gardening was associated with lower risks of cognitive decline in people over 45, with higher energy expenditure among the green-fingered participants a driving force behind the improvements.
Yet Salvador Morales’s analysis found benefits across a range of activities: aerobic training, yoga, team games, strength training and more. “Despite this variety,” he says, “the pattern was clear: structured physical exercise improved both general and fluid intelligence.”
Even so, some common themes did emerge. Interventions in his study typically lasted 30–60 minutes, were performed 3–5 days a week and often involved moderate or vigorous exercise.
Mixing different types of exercise could also help. Some evidence suggests that older adults see greater cognitive improvements when aerobic training is combined with strength and flexibility work.
There’s debate about how large or direct these effects truly are – exercise tends to accompany other benefits such as better sleep, improved mood and social interaction. But Salvador Morales thinks the weight of the evidence is hard to ignore.
“Decades of research in this field consistently show that structured exercise programmes are associated with measurable and positive improvements in key cognitive and intellectual outcomes in young people,” he says.
The same is true of just about any age group studied.
“We can’t say it’s ‘the best’, because intelligence is shaped by many biological, educational and environmental factors,” he says.
“But exercise is one of the few interventions that has shown positive and consistent effects in randomised controlled trials in youth. It also improves physical, emotional and social health at the same time, something that more specific cognitive interventions don’t always achieve.
"So while there’s no single recipe for increasing intelligence, exercise stands out as a safe, accessible and broadly beneficial strategy.”
As for playing games to increase your IQ, while brain-training apps may not deliver much in the way of an intelligence boost, newer technologies that incorporate physical activity could offer a ray of hope.
Take one recent study that saw a group of largely sedentary students play a Star Wars-esque virtual-reality game that involved using a lightsaber.
Rather than sitting still and tapping at a screen, players had to swing, dodge and react in real time – turning the game into a bout of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity.
The results were modest, but telling. After the session, participants showed measurable improvements on cognitive tests of naming, abstraction and spatial orientation – abilities linked to how we categorise information, recognise patterns and stay oriented in space.
So perhaps the smartest move isn’t to ditch brain-training games altogether, but to find the ones that get both your brain and your body in on the action.
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