Cognitive Training May Have Lasting Benefits for Seniors, Study Suggests
Older adults could significantly benefit from undergoing cognitive training, and such benefits may last for as long as 10 years – new research found.
A multi-institutional team of researchers followed 2,832 older adults, with an average age of 74. About 25 per cent of the participants were African-Americans, and about 75 per cent were women. They were divided randomly into groups receiving either memory training, reasoning training or speed training. The researchers also assigned a control group composed of older adults who didn’t receive training and had no social contact.
Memory training involved improving abilities to recall texts and lists whilst reasoning training included solving problems that involved patterns. Speed training, conducted on touch screen computers, was designed to increase speed in identifying information in different screen locations. These types of training were selected because they appeared in previous testing to be applicable to such daily activities as using the phone, tracking medication use and taking care of finances – the researchers note.
Results showed that older adults who participated in the mental exercise programmes reported less difficulty with everyday tasks of living than were those who had not participated. What’s more – such benefits remained for almost 10 years.
“Previous data from this clinical trial demonstrated that the effects of the training lasted for five years,” said Richard J. Hodes, M.D., director of the National Institute on Aging. “Now, these longer term results indicate that particular types of cognitive training can provide a lasting benefit a decade later. They suggest that we should continue to pursue cognitive training as an intervention that might help maintain the mental abilities so that they may remain independent and in the community.”
While the results showed statistical significance, it’s not clear whether these small changes in scoring data (sometimes just a couple of points different from the control group) have clinical significance in everyday living.
Frederick W. Unverzagt, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Indiana University School of Medicine, who was part of the study, noted that overall, the training sessions produced clear but modest benefits, suggesting it would be worthwhile to study the potential benefits of combining cognitive training with other lifestyle and health interventions such as exercise and improved diet.
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Some Seniors May Benefit From Cognitive Training For Up to a Decade
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