Brain Training and Age

So the last post I wrote about Brain Training software ended with a slight bummer. With all of the excitement about brain training software Scientific Learning has produced, it appears to not be all that effective. With all the supposed science behind these games something has obviously gone awry with Scientific Learning's program. Was the software not interesting enough for the kids? Did the program not improve the correct parts of the brain? There are a multitude of factors that could have gone wrong. So for this post we'll look at another company making the same sort of claims of cognitive improvement. However, instead of targeting developing youth, this company is targeting the other spectrum of the population, declining elders. Hopefully they are having more success.

Posit Science is a California company based on the work by Dr. Merzenich (As it turns out he also helped found Scientific Learning and has his name in over 200 papers - busy guy). The company has seen a lot of media time recently and is home to a large and prestigious research team. I'll leave it to them to describe their company's purpose.

"drug-free programs to address cognitive issues related to healthy aging, as well as a broad range of other conditions, including Alzheimer's disease, mild cognitive impairment, schizophrenia, and chemobrain." (http://www.positscience.com/about)

It's been shown that once 60 hits cognitive abilities may begin to decline (http://www.healthandage.com/html/min/afar/content/other6_1.htm ). This company is working on creating software that will help keep your brain in top shape as the years start to get to you.

Their website of course makes a lot of impressive claims, but it also offers a very nice study published in the American Geriatrics Society (http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122189596/abstract, the full article can be accessed through the research portal). The study design is described as multi-center, prospective, randomized, controlled, and double-blind. Sounds good right? I'll try a brief summary for us normal's. The study divided 487 people into an experimental group and control group. In the experimental group the participants used the Posit Science program for an hour a day 5 days a week for 8 weeks. In the control group instead of the Posit Science program, a simple computer-based learning software was used; the software was basically watching instructional segments and being quizzed on them. The analysis of the two groups after 8 weeks provided some interesting results. In the experimental group they found that participants had gained approximately 10 years of improvement in memory. This was determined by increases in multiple standard measures of memory, independent of the posit science software. Three out of four members of the experimental group also reported positive changes in daily life. Both of these results were significantly greater than the control group.

This is a pretty good outcome for Posit Science. This study shows that their software is a pretty reasonable tool in keeping brains "young". An interesting question to ask is how come this company seems to be so successful at their goals while Scientific Learning is struggling so much. Remember that the company is founded by a lot of the same research from the same guy, Dr. Merzenich. Is the biggest difference between the two companies the people using the software? Perhaps brain training software is just more useful to older brains at this point in the research.

A deeper look into the science behind each game involved with each program would perhaps reveal some clue to why older users seem to benefit more than younger. It would also be interesting to see what kind effects Posit Science software had on a younger population or vice versa. But until that day the result of this study (and others) is good news for businesses in the field of keeping the elderly on top of their game.