The Benefits of a One-Time Cognitive Training Program Do Last but Wane Over Time

Do you remem­ber the IMPACT study pub­lished in 2009? It was a ran­dom­ized clin­i­cal tri­al with healthy old­er adults that com­pared a com­put­er-based cog­ni­tive pro­gram that trains audi­tory pro­cess­ing (Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram, Posit Sci­ence) with edu­ca­tion­al video pro­grams (con­trol group). Peo­ple who used the pro­gram improved in the trained tasks, which was not that surprising,…

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Brain Training: It Works, and It Doesn’t Work

The IMPACT study which we report­ed on in Decem­ber 2007, fund­ed by Posit Sci­ence, con­duct­ed by the Mayo Clin­ic and USC Davis, has just announced pub­li­ca­tion at the Jour­nal of the Amer­i­can Geri­atrics Soci­ety. Ref­er­ence: — Smith et al. A Cog­ni­tive Train­ing Pro­gram Designed Based on Prin­ci­ples of Brain Plas­tic­i­ty: Results from the Improve­ment in…

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Posit Science @ GSA: well-designed Brain Training Works

Newsweek’s Sharon Beg­ley writes a great note on Brain Train­ing: How It Works based on ini­tial data pre­sent­ed at the Geron­to­log­i­cal Soci­ety of Amer­i­ca over the week­end. Some quotes: — With the nation’s 78 mil­lion baby boomers approach­ing the age of those dread­ed “where did I leave my keys? moments, it’s no won­der the market…

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Brain Health Newsletter, March Edition

We have had anoth­er busy month behind us, and we’re look­ing for­ward to Brain Aware­ness Week March 12–18. Keep read­ing for the details (includ­ing a spe­cial offer in hon­or of Brain Aware­ness Week) … I. Press Cov­er­age II. Events III. Pro­gram Reviews IV. New Offer­ings V. Web­site and Blog Sum­ma­ry. Set your DVRs – Sharp­Brains is com­ing to the small screen! Our tele­vi­sion debut will be on CBS 13 West Sacramento’s “Good Day Sacra­men­to” on Mon­day, March 12. La Opin­ion, the most pres­ti­gious Span­ish-lan­guage paper in the US, fea­tured Sharp­Brains in a recent arti­cle “Secre­to para tri­un­far en los exámenes” (Secrets to Tri­umph­ing in Exams). Anoth­er great inter­na­tion­al pub­li­ca­tion was an arti­cle called “Training the Brain as Pos­si­ble as Train­ing the Body” in the promi­nent Ara­bic news­pa­per Anna­har. And Mark Muck­en­fuss of The Press-Enter­prise in River­side writes in “Train Your Brain”: “I would tend to believe that still we under­es­ti­mate the brain,” says Fer­nan­dez, whose back­ground is in edu­ca­tion­al train­ing and mar­ket­ing. He notes that recent stud­ies have shown when a brain is injured by a stroke, “those men­tal struc­tures recre­ate them­selves (with exer­cise). It means to me there are a lot of things we could real­ly do and many times we are not aware of them. We can­not promise to peo­ple you will only keep get­ting bet­ter until you are 200 years old. But I think peo­ple still under­es­ti­mate how flex­i­ble the brain real­ly is.”

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