A New 133-Study Review Finds Video Games Boost the Brain, Barely

A new review of 133 studies covering 14,245 people finds that video games nudge cognitive ability upward, just barely. The meta-analysis, published in Acta Psychologica, is the largest pooled look yet at whether gaming sharpens the brain, and its answer is yes, with an asterisk the size of the sample itself.

Two earlier meta-analyses on the same question reached opposite conclusions within a few years of each other. One found nothing. Another found a correlation less than half the size the new paper reports. That disagreement, running through a decade of competing reviews, is the part getting lost in the celebratory headlines.

A 133-Study Meta-Analysis Finds a Small but Real Cognitive Edge

The researchers, led by Rumei Zhao, pulled together 133 studies published between January 2005 and August 2025, yielding 269 separate effect sizes drawn from a combined sample of 14,245 participants. They split the evidence into three buckets: 17 correlational studies, 94 between-group comparisons, and 22 controlled trials, the design considered the strongest source of causal evidence.

All three showed a statistically significant, positive link between playing video games and cognitive performance in domains including memory, spatial ability, visual attention, cognitive control, and intelligence. None of the three showed anything close to a large effect.

That pattern lines up with an earlier review that tied habitual play to a small memory gain across a comparably large sample, reinforcing that memory keeps surfacing as the domain most consistently touched by gaming.

The Fine Print Undercuts the Headline

Run the math on those correlations and the size gets clearer. A correlation of 0.220 means video game play statistically accounts for under 5 percent of the variation in people’s cognitive scores. The correlational estimate, 0.162, accounts for under 3 percent.

The studies feeding those numbers barely agreed with each other, either. Researchers measure that disagreement with a heterogeneity statistic, and it hit 95.21 percent for the correlational studies and 96.63 percent for the between-group comparisons, according to a separate meta-analysis hosted by the London School of Economics using the same statistical approach. In plain terms, the individual studies inside each pooled number were often pulling in different directions.

Study quality was uneven too. Using the Joanna Briggs Institute checklist, most of the 133 studies were rated medium quality, with just over a quarter rated high and a small share rated low. The researchers also tested whether the effect changed based on outside factors, and it didn’t move much no matter what they checked.

• Gender did not change the size of the effect
• Age group did not change the size of the effect
• Health condition did not change the size of the effect
• Game type did not change the size of the effect
• Intervention duration did not change the size of the effect
• Cultural context did not change the size of the effect

The authors read that uniformity as a sign the link is broad and dependable. It can just as easily be read as a sign the effect is so faint that nothing tested was strong enough to move it.

Do Rival Meta-Analyses Even Agree?

Do rival meta-analyses even agree on this question? Not really. The Zhao review calls the link modest but reliable across all three study designs, while at least two prior meta-analyses reached different verdicts, and researchers who found positive effects still disagree sharply on how big those effects actually are.

A 2018 meta-analytic investigation that pooled as many as 359 studies found no evidence of a causal relationship between playing video games and enhanced cognitive ability, concluding that video game training represents no exception to the general difficulty of obtaining far transfer.

Some researchers remain skeptical about the positive cognitive effects of playing video games, arguing that video game play typically produces only ‘near-transfer’ effects. This means improvements are largely confined to the video game itself or highly similar contexts, with limited evidence supporting the enhancement of ‘far-transfer’ cognitive abilities applicable to everyday life.

The study’s own authors wrote that passage, according to Medical Xpress’s coverage of the paper, addressing the skepticism inside their own field before critics could raise it.

• Zhao and colleagues (2026): pooling 133 studies, they call the video game and cognition link modest but reliable across correlational, between-group, and controlled-trial designs.
• A 2018 meta-analytic investigation: reviewing hundreds of studies across three separate models, it reported small or null effects and no evidence of causation.
• Bediou et al. versus Sala et al., both 2018: both found positive effects from action games, yet one estimated an effect size nearly a third larger than the other.

Where the Evidence Runs Strongest

Esports Experts Show the Clearest Gap

One corner of the research holds up better than the rest. A meta-analysis of 15 studies covering 1,085 participants compared professional and top-ranked competitive gamers against amateurs and found experts outperformed amateurs mainly in spatial cognition and attention, with an effect size of 0.373, a bigger gap than the general-population studies turned up.

Older Adults With Memory Decline See a Bigger Number

The clearest clinical signal comes from a different population entirely. A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials in adults with mild cognitive impairment, a diagnosis that often precedes dementia, found that video-game interventions raised Montreal Cognitive Assessment scores by 2.58 points compared with control groups, a far larger jump than anything in the general-population data.

That trial base is thin. It rests on just five randomized controlled trials, and the general population figures don’t automatically extend to a clinical group being actively monitored and treated.

Why the Gains Rarely Leave the Screen

The near-transfer problem shows up in the neuroscience, too. Windows Central reported that children who played games for three or more hours daily showed improvements in impulse control and working memory tasks in one brain-imaging study, alongside stronger activation in related brain regions. A second study cited by the outlet found that just one hour of action-based gaming improved reaction time and accuracy.

Those results sit inside the game, or close to it. The far-transfer question, whether a sharper reaction time in a shooter carries over to something like remembering where you left your keys, remains the unresolved part of the picture. It’s the same question researchers are now asking about other tools that reshape daily thinking; separate research on how ChatGPT use is reshaping critical thinking raises an almost identical near-transfer concern for a completely different technology.

Moderation Still Decides the Outcome

None of the researchers behind these reviews are arguing for unlimited screen time. A brain-health roundup published by Creyos notes that excessive play carries its own costs, including social isolation, poor sleep, and diagnosable gaming disorder, even as moderate play shows cognitive upside.

Researchers who study screen habits keep circling back to the same idea echoed by experts who argue technology alone falls short without a human or purposeful element built around it. A controller in someone’s hands for six hours of solo grinding and a controller in someone’s hands for six hours of cooperative play with friends are not the same behavior, even though both count as screen time in a survey.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do video games actually make people smarter?

Not in a way any single player could bank on. The correlational data singled out memory as the only domain that reached significance on its own; intelligence, one of five domains tested, didn’t clear that bar in the same analysis. The link exists at the population level, not as a guarantee for any one gamer.

Which game genres help cognitive skills the most?

It depends on the genre. A 2024 study of 88 adult gamers found that role-playing games were linked to verbal and visuospatial working memory gains, while action games tracked with faster psychomotor speed and attention, and puzzle games tracked with visuospatial working memory specifically. The same study found RPGs were linked to lower empathy scores.

How much gaming is considered healthy?

There’s no single hour count the research has settled on. The new meta-analysis found intervention duration didn’t change the size of the cognitive effect, suggesting quantity alone isn’t the deciding factor. What shifts the outcome, per other research, is whether the time goes toward active, purposeful play rather than passive or compulsive use.

Can video games help older adults with memory problems?

The strongest clinical signal in the current research comes from this group. Five randomized controlled trials covering roughly 215 adults with mild cognitive impairment found meaningful gains on standard cognitive tests, though the small trial count means the finding needs replication before it becomes standard care.

Why do experts still disagree about the research?

Method differences explain a lot of it. The London School of Economics analysis calculating a correlation of just 0.07 also reported a heterogeneity score of 52.19 percent, lower than the 95 to 97 percent range in the new review, showing that how researchers select and weight studies changes the answer almost as much as the underlying data does.

What would settle the debate for good?

More controlled trials, and better ones. Researchers behind an earlier neuroscience review argued that a longitudinal, randomized training trial paired with brain imaging would be the strongest possible test, something the current evidence base, still leaning heavily on correlational and between-group data, doesn’t yet have enough of.