Brain-training games are new exercise craze

— -- Montreal-based boxer Sylvera "Sly" Louis suffered a knockout late last year that could have ended his fighting career.

But three months later he returned to the ring, a feat he credits to hard workouts — on brain-training software.

Louis spent countless hours on Lumosity, a brain-training program from Lumos Labs that includes more than 35 games and exercises aimed at increasing alertness, sharpening memory skills, improving concentration and thinking faster.

The boxer says he improved his reaction times. "Every little moment matters," Louis says.

Louis is part of a new club that takes exercise for the brain every bit as seriously as exercise for the body. It's a growing movement that's swept up 15 million users of Lumosity. Smaller rivals such as Posit Science and MindSparke are also vying in this arena.

San Francisco-based Lumos Labs' Lumosity attracted $32.5 million in a third round of venture-capital funding in June.

Lumosity works on the Internet but also has an iPhone app. The start-up plans to use the funding to jump onto apps for Android and Apple's iPad as well as to build up its current Web-based brain workouts.

"Your brain, in some ways, is like a muscle," says Tim Chang, a partner at Norwest Venture Partners, which invested in Lumos Labs. "It needs to be kept in shape."

That was the logic of Lumosity co-founders Michael Scanlon, David Drescher and Kunal Sarkar. In 2005, the company was started to fill a void in brain-exercising software.

"People end up using it for very different reasons, in jobs or things that they care about," says Scanlon, chief scientific officer of Lumos Labs.

Brain-training software is in its early phases. But industry analysts believe it's a lucrative market that taps into people's obsession with health.

Research firm IDC says brain-training games such as Lumosity fall within a sector for education apps, which represent a $150 million market worldwide in Apple's App Store. IDC forecasts the fast-growing group will expand to a more than $1.5 billion market in 2015.