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If you’re of a certain vintage and have ever walked into a room, stopped dead and thought ‘What the hell did I come in here for?’, then you’re probably a typical Good Oil reader. Well, gaffers and gammers, I’ve got good news for you: A new long-term look at an old study suggests that a modest amount of brain training back in the 1990s may have cut the risk of dementia diagnosis by about a quarter. Now, I know the ’70s still seems like just 20 years ago, but, believe it or not, the ’90s are over 30 years past by now.
Luckily the effect hangs on. So, there’s no reason you shouldn’t give it a whirl. Give what a whirl, you say? Oh, right, you’ve already forgotten the first paragraph, haven’t you, dears?
The federally funded study of 2,802 people found that those who did eight to 10 roughly hour-long sessions of cognitive speed training, as well as at least one booster session, were about 25 per cent less likely to be diagnosed with dementia over the next two decades.
“We now have a gold-standard study that tells us that there is something we can do to reduce our risk for dementia,” says Marilyn Albert, an author of the study and a professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
“It’s super-exciting to see that these effects are still holding 20 years out,” says Jennifer O’Brien, an associate professor of psychology at the University of South Florida who was not involved in the research.
So, what did they actually do?
The ACTIVE study, funded by the National Institutes of Health and launched in 1998, put 2,802 older adults through different types of cognitive training. Some worked on memory, some on reasoning and some on processing speed: basically how quickly the brain can take in and respond to information. Researchers recently checked Medicare records to see who had been diagnosed with dementia in the following 20 years.
Only the speed-of-processing group showed a clear benefit: roughly 25 per cent lower odds of a dementia diagnosis compared with people who hadn’t done that particular training. Memory and reasoning exercises didn’t move the needle in the same way.
Why speed training worked when the others didn’t is still being unpicked, but one leading theory is that it taps into something called implicit learning, the kind of automatic, unconscious skill-building that happens when you learn to ride a bike. Once you’ve got it, you tend to keep it, even if you haven’t been near a bicycle in years. As neuroscientist Henry Mahncke puts it, you still have “a bike-riding brain”.
The actual exercise looks like a simple computer game. A car or truck flashes in the centre of the screen and a road sign appears off to the side. You have to identify the vehicle and remember where the sign was. The game keeps speeding up and adding more visual distractions as you improve. It’s not exactly the Times crossword, but it forces the brain to process information faster under pressure.
The result is good news for people like George Kovach, 74, who started doing cognitive speed training a decade ago.
“I was interested in taking care of my neurons,” says Kovach, who lives in Vienna, Virginia.
So Kovach signed up for an online program called BrainHQ, which includes the same speed exercises used in the study.
“I think I’ve done over 1,300 [sessions] of BrainHQ exercises,” Kovach says.
“These things are hard, but you do get better at it,” he says. “I look at it like doing sit-ups.”
Sounds interesting. Sign me up.
Kovach also does sit-ups, as well as high-intensity aerobic workouts on his bike – an activity shown to promote healthy brain aging.
Uh, what? You’re losing me, George.
And he follows a heart-healthy diet.
Of course, this doesn’t mean you should cancel your subscription to the cryptic crossword just yet. The training in the original study was fairly modest – roughly eight to 10 one-hour sessions, plus at least one booster. A bigger ongoing trial called PACT is now testing whether doing more sessions over several years delivers even stronger protection. First results are expected around 2028.
For now, the takeaway is refreshingly straightforward: there is at least one thing we can do that appears to shift the odds in our favour and it doesn’t involve eating nothing but kale or moving to a Greek island. A bit of targeted brain exercise, the kind that forces you to think a little quicker under mild pressure, may be worth slotting in alongside the usual advice about walking, sleeping and not drinking quite so much of whatever you were drinking in the 1970s.
Still, I don’t think they even make that stuff any more, so I’m good.
So if you’ve ever wondered whether those online brain games are anything more than digital snake oil, the answer seems to be: possibly not complete snake oil. At the very least, they’re cheaper than a new hip and considerably less painful than trying to remember where you left the car keys while they’re still in your hand.
You can try it out here.
