{"id":277203,"date":"2026-02-10T17:05:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T17:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/277203\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T17:05:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T17:05:09","slug":"simple-brain-exercise-cuts-dementia-risk-by-25-study-claims-sciencealert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/277203\/","title":{"rendered":"Simple Brain Exercise Cuts Dementia Risk by 25%, Study Claims : ScienceAlert"},"content":{"rendered":"

A simple brain-training exercise could reduce people’s risk of developing dementia by 25 percent, a study said Monday<\/a>, but with outside researchers expressing caution in interpreting the results.<\/p>\n

There are vast amounts of brain-training games and apps that claim to fight off cognitive decline, although there has been little high-quality, long-term research proving their effectiveness.<\/p>\n

The new study is a randomised controlled trial \u2013 considered the gold standard for medical research \u2013 which first began enrolling participants in the late 1990s.<\/p>\n

More than 2,800 people aged 65 or older were randomly assigned one of three different types of brain training \u2013 speed, memory, or reasoning \u2013 or were part of a control group.<\/p>\n

\"manThere have been few long-term studies into the effectiveness of brain-training apps. (StockLite\/Canva<\/a>)<\/p>\n

First, the participants did an hour-long training session twice a week for five weeks. One and three years later, they did four booster sessions. In total, there were fewer than 24 hours of training.<\/p>\n

During follow-ups after five, 10, and most recently 20 years, the speed training was always “disproportionately beneficial”, study co-author Marilyn Albert of Johns Hopkins University in the United States told AFP.<\/p>\n

After two decades, Medicare records showed that the people who did the speed-training and booster sessions had a 25-percent reduced risk of getting dementia, according to the study.<\/p>\n

The other two types of training did not make a statistically significant<\/a> difference.<\/p>\n

“For the first time, this is a gold-standard study that’s given us an idea of what we can do to reduce risk for developing dementia,” Albert said.<\/p>\n

\"Subscribe<\/a><\/p>\n

However, Rachel Richardson, a researcher at the Cochrane Collaboration not involved in the study, cautioned that “while statistically significant, the result may not be as impressive” as a 25-percent reduction.<\/p>\n

This is partly because the margins of error “range from a reduction of 41 percent to one of only five percent”, she told the Science Media Centre<\/a>.<\/p>\n

She added that the study excluded people with conditions such as poor vision or hearing, which meant it may not be fully representative.<\/p>\n

Baptiste Leurent, an expert in medical statistics at University College London, said the study had “substantial limitations<\/a>“.<\/p>\n

“Although one subgroup analysis produced a significant result, this single finding is not generally regarded as strong enough evidence to demonstrate the intervention’s effectiveness,” he said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Further research is still needed to determine whether cognitive training can reduce the risk of dementia.”<\/p>\n

‘Connectivity in the brain’<\/p>\n

The speed training exercise involves clicking on cars and road signs that pop up in different areas of a computer screen.<\/p>\n

Albert said the researchers did not know why this particular exercise appeared to be more effective.<\/p>\n

“We assume that this training affected something about connectivity in the brain,” she said.<\/p>\n

\"illustrationSpeed training appears to affect the brain’s connectivity in some way. (Sumali Ibnu Chamid\/Alemedia.id\/Canva<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Discovering the exact mechanism for why speed training worked could help researchers develop a new, more effective exercise in the future, Albert said.<\/p>\n

The results only applied to this specific exercise and cannot indicate anything meaningful about other brain-training games, she added.<\/p>\n

Related: Brain-Training App ‘Reverses 10 Years’ of Decline in a Key Brain System<\/a><\/p>\n

But the finding was “extraordinarily important”, Albert emphasised, pointing out that reducing dementia among 25 percent of the US population could save $100 billion in patient care.<\/p>\n

Dementia affects 57 million people and is the seventh leading cause of death globally, according to the World Health Organization<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The study was published in the journal Alzheimer’s and Dementia: Translational Research & Clinical Research<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 Agence France-Presse<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A simple brain-training exercise could reduce people’s risk of developing dementia by 25 percent, a study said Monday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277204,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[565,134,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-277203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fitness","tag-fitness","tag-health","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}