Elderly adults who play brain fitness games that exercise memory for 6 months show improvements in the domain of delayed memory, according to preliminary findings of a study presented at the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry 2010 Annual Meeting.

Researchers from University of California, Los Angeles performed a study in which 38 elderly adults with an average age of 82-83 years were randomly assigned to two groups – one group was immediately assigned to a computerized memory program for 6 months and the other group of active controls played the same computerized memory program but did not begin training until 2 months after randomization. The computerized memory program, called Dakim BrainFitness, exercises short-term memory, critical thinking, visual spatial skills, long-term memory, calculations and language. The researchers found that elderly adults who played the Dakim BrainFitness computerized memory program experienced significant improvements on memory scores. In contrast, active controls displayed a slight decrease in memory scores from baseline.

The researchers indicate that, by month 6 the elderly adults in the intervention group had played more than double the number of sessions of the Dakim BrainFitness computerized memory program as active controls. So, it seems that the maximum benefit to delayed memory comes with long-term use. What this means – you need to keep on playing to experience greater improvements in memory. The good thing is that BrainFitness has a variety of 300 to 400 games and 5 levels of difficulty, allowing elderly adults to move up and down between levels depending on how well they perform on different aspects of memory.

Source:

American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry 2010 Annual Meeting: Session 212. Presented 6 March 2010.