How Many Minutes a Day Should You Do Brain Training?

In the ACTIVE study, published in JAMA in 2002, 2,832 people aged 65 to 94 were divided into groups that trained memory, reasoning or speed of processing, and a group that did no training. Training consisted of ten sessions of 60 to 75 minutes over five to six weeks. It is one of the largest and most cited brain-training studies, yet spread across the days, it did not involve long training every day.

When people start brain training, one of the first questions is how many minutes a day to do. In this post I look at what research shows and then give one possible guide. I wrote about whether brain training works at all in Does Brain Training Work?

How many sessions a week worked

In 2014 Lampit and colleagues in Australia published a meta-analysis of 51 trials of computerised cognitive training in healthy older adults, with 4,885 participants in total. Overall, they found small effects on memory, processing speed and other abilities.

What stands out is the result on frequency. Training once a week, or two to three times a week, showed effects, while training more than three times a week showed no clear effect. For sessions shorter than 30 minutes, the evidence of effect was described as weak. Training in a supervised group also showed larger effects than training alone at home.

This pooled studies of older adults, though, and it does not prove that training four times a week or more stops working. Trials with frequent sessions and trials with fewer also differed in content and length. The result can be read as one hint that more is not always better.

Spacing matters more than length

For learning, it is well known that practice spread out over time lasts longer than practice crammed together. A 2006 review by Cepeda and colleagues brought together 317 experiments from 184 articles on this “distributed practice” and confirmed that spaced practice leads to better results.

Brain-training games are a little different from studying facts. Even so, there is a view that a little every day, spread over many days, builds familiarity and progress better than one hour all at once.

How long a habit takes

In 2010 Lally and colleagues at University College London published a study in which 96 people each chose a new habit and tried to do it every day. The time until the behaviour became nearly automatic varied widely, from 18 to 254 days, with a median of 66. Missing a single day did not do much to disrupt the process.

Brain training also has to become a habit to last. Finding 30 minutes every day throughout that time is hard for most people. A short session is something you can keep up even on busy days.

Doing too much at once

The problem with long sessions is less about effect and more about keeping going.

• You get tired, and your focus drops in the second half
• A day without enough time becomes a day off, and then it stops
• The feeling of “I couldn’t do 30 minutes today” makes it harder to start the next day

In the BrainDojo developer interview, asked why the app does not push people to train every single day, I said:

When doing it every day is the standard for a habit, I felt it was pretty tough. Even keeping at it in moderation, you can feel the effects of brain training.

Suggested amounts

Research does not give a “correct” number of minutes. With that said, here is one guide.

The minimum: about 3 minutes a day, two games. This is what you do even on a day with no time. Avoiding a zero day helps you keep going.

A normal day: 5 to 10 minutes, three to five games. Mixing different types, such as calculation, memory and attention, keeps it balanced.

Choose a number of days per week. It does not have to be every day. Pick a number you can keep in your life, such as three or five days a week, and keep to that.

In the interview, I also described what I had in mind when I started making BrainDojo:

Each one takes a few minutes, and if you keep doing even three a day, you can make activating your brain a habit. If brain training can become a habit the way strength training does, I think it is good for your quality of life too.

I believe whether people keep something up comes down to ease and a sense of progress. If it finishes quickly, and you can see that you do a little better than before, the right amount of time tends to settle by itself.

Setting the time in BrainDojo

BrainDojo is an iPhone and iPad app for keeping up daily brain training with short mini-games. As the store description says, you can start with sessions of about ten seconds.

During the first setup, the app asks “How much time can you spend a day?” Choosing 3 minutes, 5 minutes, or 10 minutes or more sets the number of games in Today’s Training to two, three or five. You can change the number of trainings later in the settings, and you can redo the first setup from the settings too.

How many days a week you train is set with This week’s goal. You can choose two, three or five days a week, or every day. If you miss a day, you can make it up later in the same week, and you can change the goal from the home screen at any time. On days you train you can stamp a calendar, so you can see at a glance how you have kept going.

Every training except the newest ones is free to play, and so are Today’s Training, the Brain Dojo Check once a day, and the stamp calendar. The free version shows ads. BrainDojo Plus removes them and opens the new trainings anytime. When a new training appears in Today’s Training, you can play it free that day.

Getting Started with BrainDojo walks through the first session, and BrainDojo Free vs Plus compares the two plans.