CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa --- A study using cognitive training software scores to identify America's "brainiest cities" puts the Cedar Rapids-Waterloo-Iowa City-Dubuque region among the nation's smartest.

Richard Florida, author of the watershed book "Rise of the Creative Class," ranked cities according to data from the Lumosity brain-training game software company from Lumos Labs. Florida is senior editor of the online site Atlantic Cities, where he published his findings this week.

Florida started with data developed by Lumos ity mapping the scores of more than 1 million users across United States metro areas, using software that identifies users' geographical location by their IP (Internet Protocol) addresses.

Lumosity normalized the data into a brain performance index controlling for age and gender, and limited its ranking to data with more than 500 "observations," or Lumosity results that could be tracked.

Plenty of college towns and research centers showed up with the highest "brainy metro scores" on a map prepared by the Martin Prosperity Institute's Zara Matheson.

The highest ranked metro area was Charlottesville, Va., followed by Lafayette, Ind., and Anchorage, Alaska.