A Missing Ingredient in Alzheimer’s Disease Prevention May Lie in Brain Training Technology

At some point, many of us start to feel it: the reaching for a word, the wondering what we came for when we entered a room. It’s probably not dementia; more likely a severe case of digital overload and multitasking mania.

Yet books and films like Still Alice, in which a Harvard linguistics professor descends into early onset Alzheimer’s disease at age 50, can hit a little too close to home. Who are we if we can’t remember?

Memories, Like the Corners of My Mind ¦

In Memory and Emotion: The Making of Lasting Memories, memory expert James L. McGaugh of the University of California/Irvine writes: “We are, after all, our memories. Our memory provides us with an autobiographical record and enables us to understand and react appropriately to changing experiences. Memory is the ‘glue’ of our personal existence.”

There are some surprising causes of memory loss, including sleep apnea, vitamin B12 deficiency (which can lead to pernicious anaemia), medications, and urinary tract infections, which can mimic dementia in the elderly. But a lot of it comes down to mental fitness.

What’s a senior to do? Brain training.

How to Train, and Retrain, Your Brain

Just as we join gyms and work with personal trainers to keep our bodies in shape, we can keep our brains fit and help prevent Alzheimer’s disease with cognitive training.

Playing games can seriously improve your grey matter, even if your hair is grey. But just as with physical exercise, it has to be the right kind of brain training.

In a decade-long clinical trial known as ACTIVE ” Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly ” 2,800 healthy older adults, average age 73.6, were randomly assigned to one of three brain-training groups. Some were trained in verbal memory, some on problem-solving, and some on computer-based speed-of-processing for visual attention. As with all such scientific research, there was a control group. They received no brain training at all.

A select group also received “booster” sessions after years one and three of the trial (similar to a vaccine booster shot, which helps maintain immunity).

ACTIVE found a 29% reduction in dementia diagnoses among the seniors who received speed-of-processing training ” and each booster session dropped dementia risk another ten percent.

That’s significant. However, there isn’t yet a pill to disseminate brain training to seniors on a mass scale.

Researchers Harness Big Data to Combat Alzheimer’s Disease

Big data is empowering researchers to combat Alzheimer’s disease in ways never before possible. It’s long been known that engaging in cognitively stimulating activities throughout life can reduce an individual’s risk of Alzheimer’s disease or dementia, or slow the progression of the disease for those who are already diagnosed. But now, researchers are harnessing data to pinpoint specific cognitive activities and develop brain training programs that target those cognitive processes to reap even more preventative benefits.

These advances are possible in part thanks to the identification of biomarkers that made it possible for researchers to identify early determinants. In turn, this enables researchers to develop targeted programs that aim to change the course of progression “ by treating patients before any clinical signs of Alzheimer’s disease arise. In other words, by treating the disease before it has any impacts on a person‘s daily life, there’s hope for reducing “ or at least slowing “ the manifestation of the signs and symptoms that make Alzheimer’s disease so devastating for patients and their loved ones.

Early detection allows for treatment of Alzheimer’s disease in the early stages before the symptoms are so severe that they impact daily life. And by treating the disease in these early stages, the hope is to slow progression to enable patients to continue their current lifestyle as long as possible.

Brain Training: A Relatively New Development That Shows Promise

Researchers from the Departments of Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences and the Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute at the University of Cambridge developed a brain training game that aims to overcome the limitations of previous efforts “ namely, the repetitive nature of some brain training games that can hinder users’ motivation. The memory game app, called Game Show,’ challenges players to associate geometric patterns with specific locations, gamifying the process by awarding coins for correct matches and adapting to users’ skill levels with progressive difficulty (the more correct matches a user gets, the more patterns are presented on future rounds).

While this study, published in The International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, was small (with just 42 participants), the study found a 40 percent improvement in memory score among participants who played the game in a test of episodic memory, which is crucial for day-to-day activities, such as remembering where you left the car keys or where you parked the car. Additionally, participants in the game-playing group retained more complex visual information following training.

Notably, participants in the game-playing group were motivated to continue engaging in the activity for the full eight hours of cognitive training. Their confidence and subjective memory also increased. Motivation is an important achievement in brain training games; without it, patients may fail to engage for the time necessary to achieve therapeutic outcomes.

Brain training is in its infancy, but it shows tremendous promise in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease. Coupled with earlier diagnosis, harnessing big data to identify and target key cognitive processes with gamified brain training technology may be the key that unlocks the secret to winning the fight. Engaging in cognitively challenging tasks has long been recognised as beneficial for reducing the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. But one day soon, it may be possible to effectively treat early-stage Alzheimer’s through early detection and targeted cognitive training that can help to slow progression “ giving patients more time to live their lives to the fullest.