My son started playing lumosity recently and says he's noticing improvements in his cognitive skills. And he's not the kind of person to think everything he tries helps him.

The game measures and trains five areas: memory, attention, problem solving, flexibility, and speed. I don't know what to think of it, if it works or not. I have a subscription and enjoy it. My numbers for all of these skills have always been high, in the upper 90's for my age group. I'm kind of a cynic, so I just figured they tell everyone that.

Well, when my son started, one of his skills was in the 5th percentile (I can't remember which skill it was). He's trained until he's now reached something like the 60th percentile for that skill. Critics say it just trains you to play the games better. I don't know. My son insists he's seeing improvements that carry over into his daily life.

Another interesting thing: when he started, he was very low on all the skills except attention which he was in the 90's on. We talked about how he's been hypervigilant for years, scanning for other people's reactions to him and what he's doing. It's like he's been working that attention muscle constantly.

So, because my son is impressed - and he's hard to impress - I did a google search and found that there are experiments being conducted in this area. Here's an article: Brain games target schizophrenia - HT Health.