Simple visual processing exercise is the first intervention to limit dementia

Enlarge / Exercises that help you to quickly pick out details seem to have the biggest effect on dementia. (credit: Flickr user City Lights)

Dementia strikes many people as they age, and there's currently not much we can do about it. It would be nice to think that there could be a fix to stave it off, like a computer game or something that could do more than help you improve at that computer game. Well now, for the first time, it seems like there may be.

The Advanced Cognitive Training in Vital Elderly (ACTIVE) study was a randomized controlled trial in which thousands of healthy seniors got different kinds of cognitive training and had their cognition monitored over ten years. Importantly, the trial was registered at its outset at ClinicalTrials.gov, so even if all of the results were negative (and therefore not likely to be published in an academic journal) they would still be on record and accessible.

After five years, all of the results were in fact negative. But after ten years, one of the interventions reduced dementia risk by about 30 percent.

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