Cognitive Fitness Training for the Brain

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There is a great arti­cle on some find­ings from The Brain Fit­ness in Old­er Adults (B‑fit) study post­ed at Psych Cen­tral: Fit­ness Train­ing for the Brain and Sci­ence Dai­ly: Atten­tion Train­ing May Help Old­er Adults Improve Con­cen­tra­tion.

Here are a few key points:

  • Ear­ly results from a Wake For­est Uni­ver­si­ty Bap­tist Med­ical Cen­ter study appear to affirm cog­ni­tive ben­e­fits as atten­tion train­ing allowed old­er adults to block out dis­trac­tions and improve concentration.
  • Paul Lau­ri­en­ti, M.D., Ph.D., lead sci­en­tist on this study, said that as peo­ple age, they expe­ri­ence changes in how they per­ceive the infor­ma­tion that their eyes and ears gath­er from the envi­ron­ment. … Specif­i­cal­ly, old­er adults com­bine infor­ma­tion from the dif­fer­ent sens­es more read­i­ly than do younger adults. This ten­den­cy, known as sen­so­ry inte­gra­tion, can lead to dif­fi­cul­ties in block­ing out dis­tract­ing sights and sounds while still main­tain­ing focus on impor­tant information.
  • Fol­low-up fMRIs showed that in the group receiv­ing the one-on-one train­ing, activ­i­ty relat­ed to sight was increased, while activ­i­ty relat­ed to sound was decreased. In addi­tion, per­for­mance on the task was improved.
  • “Behav­ioral and imag­ing data sup­port our hypoth­e­sis that atten­tion train­ing can reduce mul­ti-sen­so­ry inte­gra­tion,” said Mozolic. “This sug­gests that atten­tion train­ing is a poten­tial way to improve sen­so­ry pro­cess­ing by reduc­ing old­er adults’ sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty to dis­tract­ing stimuli.”

Stay tuned as we look for the research study to con­tin­ue with more par­tic­i­pants. If you are look­ing for some of your own one-on-one train­ing, see if Mind­Fit meets your goals. You can always use our check­list to help you eval­u­ate any brain fit­ness program.