Could games designed to strengthen mental skills help prevent Alzheimer’s disease as you age? According to a new 20-year study, they may.
More than 7 million Americans have Alzheimer’s disease, and that number is expected to rise to 13 million by 2050, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. There’s no proven way to prevent or cure the disease, but delaying its onset—even modestly—can help preserve and prolong people’s independence and quality of life. “That’s why expanding the menu of evidence-based prevention tools is so critical,” said Vernon Williams, MD, a sports neurologist and founding director of the Center for Sports Neurology and Pain Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Orthopaedics in Los Angeles.
The new research, published in the medical journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Translational Research & Clinical Interventions, traces back to 1998. That’s when researchers recruited 2,802 older adults—most of whom were women and white—and assigned them to one of three groups receiving different forms of cognitive training or to a control group that received no cognitive training.
Participants in the cognitive training groups completed memory, reasoning, or speed-of-processing tasks during 10 sessions lasting 60 to 75 minutes over five to six weeks. The speed-of-processing tasks were designed to improve mental quickness and the accuracy of object identification.
Approximately half of those in the cognitive training group completed up to four additional “booster” sessions held 11 months and 35 months after the initial training course.
In 2016, the researchers shared their initial discoveries, finding that participants who completed the speed-of-processing brain training exercises had a 48% lower risk of developing dementia over 10 years.
For their latest findings, the research team analyzed 20 years of Medicare data, spanning 1999 to 2019, to identify who was diagnosed with dementia. They found that those who had the speed training intervention had a substantially lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s and related dementias later in life.
Among those who completed the speed training and additional booster sessions, 40% were eventually diagnosed with dementia compared to 49% in the control group. Speed training was the only brain game associated with significantly lower chances of developing the cognitive condition.
As Jonathan Rasouli, MD, a neurosurgeon at Northwell Health’s Staten Island University Hospital, summarized, “older adults who engage in specific speed-based cognitive training exercises may have a substantially lower long-term risk of being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, especially when booster training sessions are included.”
Prior evidence shows that brain training exercises can improve cognitive performance in both the short and long term. But the new report “suggests that how we train the brain matters,” Williams said.
The fact that only speed training was linked to a lower risk of dementia is an important detail. Targeted, reinforced brain training may influence long-term dementia risk more than, say, isolated sessions. “Brain health requires the right stimulus, the right dose, and ongoing reinforcement with feedback,” Williams said.
Rasouli added that cognitive exercises that improve processing speed, divided attention, and rapid visual decision-making may strengthen neural networks and resilience. This could, in turn, help “the brain better account for age-related changes and reduce the chances of a dementia diagnosis decades later,” he explained.
That said, this doesn’t mean brain training is a magic bullet. “Cognitive training should be part of a holistic brain-healthy lifestyle, including physical exercise, sleep quality, social engagement, and diet,” Rasouli said.
Looking ahead, experts said more research is needed to understand who benefits most from brain training and how other preventative strategies, like exercise and sleep hygiene, can impact dementia risk when combined with brain training.
