This Brain Training Game Protects Against Dementia for Up to 20 Years

According to a large study, playing a brain training video game can protect your brain against dementia for at least two decades. Scientists from John Hopkins say the findings are the strongest evidence that cognitive training can create lasting changes in the brain. “It’s very surprising,” said Marilyn Albert, director of the Johns Hopkins Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. “It’s not at all what I would have expected.” The research, published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Translational Research and Clinical Interventions, was a long-term follow-up of the Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly (ACTIVE) trial. According to the study, those who did around 23 hours of a specific type of cognitive training known

as speed training over three years were found to have a dramatic 25 per cent lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia over a 20-year follow-up period. These findings are instrumental in confirming a previous study that was released from the trial, where participants were found to have a lower dementia risk after a decade.

How was the study conducted?

According to the ACTIVE study, a large randomized controlled trial funded by the National Institutes of Health, enrolled almost 3,000 participants aged 65 years and older. They were from various geographical areas and did not have any significant prior cognitive impairment. Roughly 25 per cent of patients were minorities, and a majority were women. Studies say women are generally more vulnerable to Alzheimer’s disease, developing dementia at nearly twice the rate of men. Participants were told to do around 10 sessions of training, playing Brain HQ’s Double Decision game twice every week for 60 to 75 minutes over five weeks. Around half of the participants in each training group got additional booster training for up to 23 hours over a three-year period.

What were the findings?

Tracking their medical records to know how much dementia the participants were diagnosed with in 20 years, researchers found that there were different forms of the cognitive condition – including Alzheimer’s, vascular dementia, and frontotemporal dementia - all grouped into a single category. The participants who did speed training and received the booster sessions had a 25 per cent reduction in the risk of a dementia diagnosis compared with the control group. Those without the additional sessions did not see a benefit.Also read: Drinking 1 to 3 Cups of Coffee or Tea Daily May Lower Dementia Risk

What are the three training programmes used in the game?

Participants were put into three different cognitive training programs - speed training, memory training, and reasoning training. Also, one control group did not receive any form of cognitive training. Experts say speed training teaches the brain to process visual information more quickly and accurately. In this, individuals were asked to identify objects on a screen quickly and make a decision about them. In memory training, participants were taught strategies for remembering lists of words and details of stories. In reasoning training, study participants worked on the ability to solve problems that follow a serial pattern, like identifying the pattern in a letter or number series. Those in the memory and reasoning training did not see any protective effect against dementia. While the researchers don’t know for sure why speed training showed a benefit while the other forms did not, one possibility lies in the difference between implicit and explicit learning, where you use an unconscious habit or skill to do a task. According to scientists, speed training can create long-lasting changes in the brain.