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People who use "brain-training" computer games in a bid to boost their mental skills and memory are likely to be disappointed. A new study finds that the games don't makes users any smarter.

The study, published online by the journal Nature, was funded by the BBC in the United Kingdom. The network airs "Bang Goes the Theory," a science show that aims to challenges long-held scientific principles.

The researchers recruited viewers of the show -- more than 11,000 people aged 18 to 60 – and gave them a modified form of an IQ test before the experiment.

They were then asked to play online brain games for at least 10 minutes a day, three times a week. The games differed between each group:

One group was trained on games focusing on reasoning, planning and problem-solving abilities — skills correlated with general intelligence.

A second group was trained on mental functions targeted by commercial brain-training programs — short-term memory, attention, visuospatial abilities and maths.

A third group, the control subjects, simply used the Internet to find answers to obscure questions.

The volunteers were then assessed again for IQ after six weeks.

The researchers found that the people who did any kind of brain training didn't perform any better on the IQ test than people who had simply been on the Internet. In fact, in some sections of the test, the people who surfed the Web scored higher than those playing the games.

"There were absolutely no transfer effects" from the training tasks to more general tests of cognition, said Adrian Owen, a neuroscientist at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Cognition and Brian Sciences Unit in Cambridge, who led the study.

Owen told a press briefing that there's nothing wrong with playing the games for fun. "But if you're expecting (these games) to improve your IQ, our data suggests this isn't the case," he said.

Study researcher Jessica A. Grahn, also with MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, said even those participants who practised more than average, "there was still no translation to any general improvement in cognitive function," she told the telephone news conference.

"Some of things they were practicing, like getting faster at math, may be useful in and of itself. But if you are [brain training] to see a generalized improvement in overall function, the evidence does not support it," she said.

David Moore, director of the MRC Institute of Hearing Research in Nottingham, UK, and a founder of MindWeavers, a company in Oxford, UK, selling the brain-training program MindFit, said there were some limitations to the study.

He noted to Nature News that the volunteers were a self-selected group "who would have had a natural inclination to play this sort of game," he said.

Moore also wondered whether the six-week length of the study was long enough, noting that the average participant had just four hours of training.

Owen noted that his study's findings apply only to healthy adults who use the games, not those with Alzheimer's disease or other cognitive disorders. "These results do not speak to Alzheimer's disease," Owens said.

He also conceded that his findings don't necessarily mean that training in young children or elderly patients is pointless. But "the evidence is not strong," he said. "And someone needs to go and test it."