Could Brain Training Prevent Dementia?

It’s been a lousy couple of years for researchers who study the effects of computerized brain training. In October of 2014 a group of more than seventy academics published what they called a consensus statement, asserting that playing brain games had been shown to improve little more than the ability to play brain games. “Perhaps the most pernicious claim, devoid of any scientifically credible evidence, is that brain games prevent or reverse Alzheimer’s disease,” the group stated. “No studies have demonstrated that playing brain games cures or prevents Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia.” Then, this past January, the Federal Trade Commission fined Lumosity, the largest and best-known provider of online brain games, two million dollars for making what the commission considered to be unsubstantiated claims of cognitive improvement. Even as dozens of researchers, some funded by the National Institutes of Health and other reputable government agencies, continued to insist that the field was not the neuroscientific equivalent of desktop fusion or coffee colonics, the fact remained that no brain game, nor any drug, dietary supplement, or lifestyle intervention, had ever been shown in a large, randomized trial to prevent dementia. That was the case until today, when surprising new results were announced at the Alzheimer’s Association annual meeting, in Toronto.