Researchers announced Monday that a randomized controlled trial – considered the gold standard in medical research – has finally identified something that can significantly reduce the risk of developing dementia.
And rather than an expensive drug, it was a simple, cheap brain-training exercise that was found to reduce dementia rates by a quarter, the study found.
“For the first time, this is a landmark study that has given us an idea of what we can do to reduce the risk of developing dementia,” said study co-author Marilyn Albert of Johns Hopkins University in the United States. AFP.
Although there are a large number of brain training games and apps claiming to combat cognitive decline, there is little quality, long-term research proving their effectiveness.
The team of US researchers cautioned that their study – which found only one specific type of training made a difference – did not mean all brain training games were effective.
Their trial, called ACTIVE, began in the late 1990s.
More than 2,800 participants aged 65 or older were randomly assigned one of three types of brain training (speed, memory or reasoning) or were part of a control group.
First, participants completed a one-hour training session twice a week for five weeks. One year and three years later, they conducted four booster sessions. In total, there were less than 24 hours of training.
In follow-ups after five, 10 and more recently 20 years, speed training was still “disproportionately beneficial,” Albert said.
After two decades, Medicare records showed that people who completed speed and recall training sessions had a 25% reduced risk of developing dementia.
The researchers were surprised to find that the other two types of training did not result in a statistically significant difference.
The speed training exercise involves clicking on cars and road signs that appear in different areas of a computer screen.
“Extraordinarily important”
So why did speed training have such an impact? Albert said researchers can only guess.
“We assume that this training affected something at the level of connectivity in the brain,” Albert said.
An important difference was that it adapted to the person’s abilities and therefore became easier or more difficult as needed.
Asked about the study’s limitations, Albert said “there aren’t many.” A quarter of the participants were minorities, suggesting that the results should apply to everyone.
Discovering the exact mechanism of why speed training works could help researchers develop a new, more effective exercise in the future, Albert said.
But the finding is already “extraordinarily important,” she said, noting that reducing dementia in 25% of the U.S. population could save $100 billion in patient care.
Many previous studies suggest that people with healthier lifestyles have a lower risk of dementia. However, this research has been observational, meaning it cannot directly demonstrate cause and effect, unlike randomized controlled trials.
Dementia affects 57 million people and is the seventh leading cause of death worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.
The speed training task is called “Double Decision” and is available through the brain training app BrainHQ.
The study was published in the journal Alzheimer’s and Dementia: Translational Research & Clinical Research.
