The evidence

What the research actually shows

Wave Rx is BrainRx. Brain Wave is a licensed BrainRx provider, so the programme we run in Manama is the same one studied below. Forty years of research sits behind it. Here it is in full, including the parts that are less flattering.

A lightbulb folded from white paper

Whose research this is

Every figure on this page is taken from BrainRx Research Results and Client Outcomes, 5th edition, prepared by Amy L. Moore, PhD, Cognitive Psychologist. The research was conducted by BrainRx and the Gibson Institute of Cognitive Research, a non-profit research body. It is their work and we are reporting it, not claiming it.

Brain Wave is a licensed BrainRx provider. Wave Rx is not a programme modelled on BrainRx or inspired by it, it is BrainRx, delivered here under licence by trained clinicians. That is why this research applies to what we do.

These are the programme's international results, not Brain Wave's own. They describe what BrainRx training has achieved across tens of thousands of clients worldwide. They are the reason we chose to deliver this programme in Bahrain. They are not a promise about what will happen for your child, and anyone who tells you a programme guarantees a result is telling you something no honest clinician can.

The size of the evidence

  • 121,000+clients trained worldwide since 1985
  • 27,790clients pre- and post-tested between 2010 and 2022
  • 4 to 95the age range of those clients
  • 79average training hours per client

Clients were tested before and after training using the Woodcock-Johnson test batteries, the Gibson Assessment of Cognitive Skills and the Kaufman Tests of Educational Achievement. Nineteen separate research studies used those and other standardised assessments, and four used fMRI brain imaging.

Gains in randomised controlled trials

A randomised controlled trial is the strongest kind of evidence there is: participants are assigned by chance to training or to a control group, so the result cannot be explained by who volunteered. These are the average standard score gains.

Children and teens with learning struggles Children and teens with ADHD
Average standard score gains by cognitive skill
SkillLearning strugglesADHD
Long-term memory +28 +34
Logic and reasoning +28 +27
IQ score +21 +26
Working memory +13 +20
Processing speed +13 +16
Auditory processing +13 +15
Visual processing +11 +5

Visual processing is the one skill where children with ADHD gained less than children with learning struggles, and considerably less than they gained elsewhere. We have left it in rather than trimming the chart at six skills.

Gains by diagnosis

Average standard score gains for clients who already had a diagnosis when they started. Darker means a larger gain.

Average standard score gains by cognitive skill and diagnosis
SkillADHDDyslexiaLearning disabilitySpeechAutismBrain injuryAdults 50+
Long-term memory14131312121514
IQ score14131313131311
Auditory processing1212121212108
Sustained attention1211111010107
Logic and reasoning111111111099
Working memory109101210109
Processing speed989910106
Visual processing8888898

All changes were statistically significant. Gains for adults over 50 are consistently smaller than for the other groups, particularly in attention and processing speed, which is what you would expect and which the report states plainly.

Where each group started, and where they finished

Percentile rank before training and after it, across the seven skills the programme trains. The fainter bar is where the group began. Choose a group to see its own figures.

  • 27,790 clients
  • 79 average training hours
  • IQ score 96 to 109 +13
Everyone tested, all ages
Long-term memory3559+24
Visual processing5167+16
Auditory processing6381+18
Logic and reasoning4767+20
Processing speed3850+12
Working memory3956+17
Sustained attention4367+24

A percentile says how a person compares with others their age. Moving from the 35th to the 59th percentile means going from behind roughly two thirds of your peers to ahead of more than half of them. Standard scores and percentiles are pooled across the Woodcock-Johnson III and IV batteries and the Gibson Assessment of Cognitive Skills. All changes were statistically significant at p < .001.

Eight further breakdowns in the report are not shown here. Their charts could not be read off the source with enough confidence to publish, and we would rather show you fewer numbers than risk showing you a wrong one.

Does it last?

Retested sixteen months later, 2,383 clients held 97 to 99 per cent of their gains across every cognitive area.

That covers IQ score, logic and reasoning, memory, attention, processing speed, visual processing and auditory processing. Retention matters more than the initial gain. A result that fades by the next school year has not changed anything.

Reading and maths

Among 13,264 clients of the reading programme, group average basic auditory processing moved from the 58th percentile before training to the 77th after. For children, the average change across reading skills was 3.2 years, with the largest single gain, 5.7 years, in sound awareness.

Among 3,982 clients of the maths programme, group average reasoning moved from the 38th percentile to the 60th. For children the average gain in maths skills was 2.8 years.

What the studies could not find a difference in

Worth saying, because it is unusual for a provider to publish it: the studies found no statistically significant difference in outcomes between training delivered entirely by a clinician and training shared with a parent or carer, between fully in-person delivery and half-digital delivery, or between remote and in-person delivery during COVID-19.

What this means for a family in Bahrain

It means the programme we deliver has been measured properly, repeatedly, by people with no reason to flatter it, and that the results hold up over time. It does not mean your child will gain 21 IQ points. What we can tell you after an assessment is which specific skills are weak, what the training would target, and what we would expect to change. That conversation costs nothing.

Start here

Start with an assessment

Before any training, we test the specific cognitive skills involved so you know exactly what we would be working on and why.

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