Just 5 weeks of brain training may protect against dementia for 20 years
7 hours ago
- #dementia prevention
- #healthy aging
- #cognitive training
- A 5-6 week brain training program for adults 65+ may reduce dementia risk by 25% over 20 years.
- Speed of processing training, focusing on visual information, showed significant long-term protective effects against dementia.
- Participants who received booster sessions after initial training had lower dementia incidence compared to the control group.
- The study is the first randomized clinical trial to track dementia outcomes over two decades in older adults undergoing cognitive training.
- Speed training's adaptive nature and reliance on implicit learning may explain its effectiveness in dementia prevention.
- Other cognitive training types (memory and reasoning) did not show the same long-term protective effects.
- The findings suggest potential for integrating speed training with other healthy aging strategies to delay dementia onset.