Your Brain May Thank You for Training on This Game

If you're over 65 and willing to log a few hours a year on a specific brain game, a new study suggests your future self might thank you in the coming years. Researchers tracking nearly 3,000 older adults for two decades found that those who completed up to 23 hours of a visual "speed training" program over a three-year stretch were about 25% less likely to be diagnosed with dementia than those who did no such training. The follow-up, published in the Alzheimer's & Dementia: Translational Research & Clinical Interventions journal, builds on earlier results from a large NIH-funded trial and is being described by outside experts as the clearest evidence yet that certain brain exercises can alter dementia risk, per NBC News.

Participants, all 65 and up and cognitively healthy at the outset, were randomly assigned to one of three cognitive programs—speed, memory, or reasoning—or to a control group that received no training, all over a six-week period. Only the speed group that received "booster" sessions (the 23 additional sessions over three years) saw benefits. The task, now offered as the "Double Decision" game on the subscription-based BrainHQ, trains people to rapidly pick out and respond to visual details on a screen, a process that researchers liken to the split-second judgments made while driving, per NBC.

"It seemed implausible that we might still see benefits two decades later," says study co-author Michael Marsiske in a release. Scientists suspect the fast-paced, adaptive nature of the training taps into implicit learning and may potentially boost "cognitive reserve," the brain's ability to fend off dementia symptoms, per NBC. Still, the authors and outside neurologists stress that no single tool prevents dementia. They frame speed training as one piece of a broader strategy that includes managing blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar; protecting hearing and vision; exercising regularly; staying mentally engaged; and, emerging research suggests, possibly even getting the shingles vaccine.