The DOI matches its Crossref record; 101 of the 101 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
No Effect of Commercial Cognitive Training on Brain Activity, Choice Behavior, or Cognitive Performance
Open accessAbstract
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.
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“Kable et al. (2017) showed that cognitive training (including working memory training) was unable to decrease DD in healthy controls.”
From Behavioral trainings and manipulations to reduce delay discounting: A systematic review (2019) · cites this paper as Kable et al. (2017)
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Diamond, A. D., & Ling, D. S. (2019) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/oso/9780199974467.003.0008 · Cited by 343
Pallavicini, F., Ferrari, A., & Mantovani, F. (2018) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02127 · Cited by 238
Brain Modularity: A Biomarker of Intervention-related Plasticity
Gallen, C. L., & D’Esposito, M. (2019) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2019.01.014 · Cited by 168
Promoting Successful Cognitive Aging: A Ten-Year Update
Krivanek, T. J., Gale, S. A., McFeeley, B. M., Nicastri, C. M., & Daffner, K. R. (2021) · Journal of Alzheimer s Disease · doi:10.3233/jad-201462 · Cited by 189
“Additionally, despite evidence supporting cognitive stimulation for brain health, many popular commercial cognitive or memory training platforms have limited supporting evidence [128, 129].”
BackgroundBehavioral trainings and manipulations to reduce delay discounting: A systematic review
Scholten, H., Scheres, A., de Water, E., Graf, U., Granic, I., & Luijten, M. (2019) · Psychonomic Bulletin & Review · doi:10.3758/s13423-019-01629-2 · Cited by 135
“Yet, the study by Parthasarathi and colleagues (Parthasarathi, McConnell, Luery, & Kable, 2017) employed a visualization training and did not find the expected effects on DD.”
Background
Metadata
- Authors
- Kable, J. W., Caulfield, M. K., Falcone, M., McConnell, M., Bernardo, L., Parthasarathi, T., Cooper, N., Ashare, R., Audrain-McGovern, J., Hornik, R., Diefenbach, P., Lee, F. J., & Lerman, C.
- Affiliations
- University of Pennsylvania (US)
- Drexel University (US)
- ORCID
- Venue
- The Journal of Neuroscience
- Publisher
- Society for Neuroscience
- Published
- 2017-07-10
- Volume
- 37
- Issue
- 31
- Pages
- 7390-7402
- ISSN
- 0270-6474 (ISSN-L)
- 1529-2401
- PMC
- PMC5546110
- OpenAlex
- W2736288670
- Cited by
- 124
- References
- 101
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 14 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 20 · 2020: 20 · 2019: 16 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 1
- FWCI
- 16.97
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Journal of Neuroscience (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- ScholarlyCommons (University of Pennsylvania) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health (5t32mh017168-34)
- National Institute of Mental Health (T32 MH-017168)
- National Cancer Institute (R01CA170297, R35CA197461)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Cognitive Abilities and Testing
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Keywords
- cognitive training, executive function, delay discounting, risk sensitivity, decision-making, brain activity, video games, adaptive training, cognitive performance, young adults
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Brain, Choice Behavior, Cognition, Female, Humans, Learning, Male, Reward, Task Performance and Analysis, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Executive Function
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