| Participating in brain training could help you stave off Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia for at least 20 years. A study of older adults who participated in a cognitive exercise experiment in the 1990s, which aimed to increase the brain’s processing speed, came to this conclusion. The federally funded study of 2,802 people found that those who completed eight to 10 roughly hour-long cognitive speed training sessions, along with at least one booster session, lowered their risk of a dementia diagnosis over the next two decades by about 25%.
🧠 The ACTIVE study includes exercises that boost memory and reasoning skills. Participants in speed training were less likely to be diagnosed with dementia. This is because this form of brain training appears to trigger implicit learning, or the process of acquiring unconscious skills.
🧠 An online program called BrainHQ provides the same speed exercises used in the ACTIVE study.
🧠 BrainHQ's speed-training exercise challenges users to watch a computer screen. The premise of the exercise is for users to identify the correct vehicle and remember the location of the road sign. As the game progresses, vehicles become harder to tell apart. |