Cognitive maintenance 2.0: From crossword puzzles to targeted mental stimulation

The Sil­ver Econ­o­my: Brain train­ing fired up by hard evi­dence (Finan­cial Times):

“Not so long ago, peo­ple kept age­ing brains active through read­ing and writ­ing, talk­ing with friends and fam­i­ly, and per­haps play­ing cards or doing puz­zles. Now a rapid­ly grow­ing num­ber are tak­ing a high-tech approach to cog­ni­tive main­te­nance, through com­put­er pro­grams designed to stim­u­late the brain…

Two fac­tors lie behind this rapid growth. One is the improv­ing hard­ware and soft­ware, par­tic­u­lar­ly graph­ics, that make brain-train­ing pro­grams appeal­ing to elder­ly users who are not com­fort­able with com­put­ers or smartphones…The oth­er fac­tor expand­ing the sec­tor is accu­mu­lat­ing sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence about the brain’s “plas­tic­i­ty”, the fact that neu­rons can grow or adapt to new tasks at any age, giv­en the right stimulus.

While it is obvi­ous that prac­tis­ing a par­tic­u­lar skill makes you bet­ter at it, at least in the short term, some neu­ro­sci­en­tists have ques­tioned whether spe­cif­ic brain train­ing pro­grams lead to a broad­er improve­ment in cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties and, if so, how long this lasts.”

Learn more:

• Info­graph­ic on the Dig­i­tal Brain Health Mar­ket 2012–2020
• 2014 Sharp­Brains Vir­tual Sum­mit (Octo­ber 28–30th)
• Can brain train­ing work? Yes, if it meets these 5 conditions