This morning I poured myself a thermos of coffee and left for lab, abandoning it on the kitchen counter. I nearly forgot about the paper I had to review this week until I saw the deadline looming on my desk calendar. And I didn’t remember my friend’s birthday until logging into Facebook – and I’m always the one people rely on to remember birthdays.

I sure could use a little memory boost. Unfortunately, despite the growing popularity of brain-training apps and programmes like Lumosity, CogniFit, CogMed and Jungle Memory, I’m not going to find any help here; studies raise doubt about whether these programmes and apps have any tangible effect on improving cognition.