The annual Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (AAIC) recently wrapped up in London. It’s always an exciting meeting with a lot of news about new scientific results. Usually, much of the news is about drug development, but over the years there’s been more and more about the science of improving and maintaining brain health. While thousands of scientific reports were presented, one clear take-away from this year is that it’s time to retire the vague advice to “stay mentally active” in favor of programs shown to have actual scientific benefit.
Study showed big gains in older adults from structured intervention
Perhaps the biggest news story out of AAIC was a report from the LATAM FINGERS Study, presented at the conference and published simultaneously in the prestigious British medical journal the Lancet. It showed a significant and quite substantial (55 percent) increase in a measure of global cognition among older adults who took part in a structured program of brain exercise, physical exercise, and a brain-healthy diet, in comparison to those in a more flexible group who received the same advice but with less structure.
LATAM FINGERS is the 11-nation South American part of the Worldwide FINGER Trials sponsored by the Alzheimer’s Association, which are replicating and extending the results from the first FINGER (Finnish Geriatric) trial completed in 2015.
As with several other FINGER studies (including the completed US POINTER and Japan MINT studies), the BrainHQ brain exercise app was selected for the brain exercise component; a modified version of the Mediterranean diet (the MIND diet) was recommended; and participants were asked to engage in a physical exercise program. Group meetings provided socialization opportunities, and blood pressure monitoring was part of the protocol.
The overall results were significant in both groups, but the structured program had gains that were 55% higher — with those participants improving by an average amount that’s like moving from the 50th to the 70th percentile in the global cognition score. Researchers noted the gains were even more impressive in people with lower initial cognitive scores and with less formal education than in prior studies.
“We often see that those with more ‘headroom’—lower initial cognitive scores—improve more,” commented Dr. Mouna Attarha, who coordinated the BrainHQ interface with the LATAM FINGERS Study. “So that was not surprising. What I found interesting was this study tried to include more people than we often see in studies with six or less years of formal education. That may partially explain why the gains were so dramatic, offering hope these interventions can help nearly all older adults.”
Which activity yields the biggest gains?
Studies like the Worldwide FINGER Trials, which involve multiple changes in behavior, often lead people to ask which behavioral change contributed the most to the gain. No attempt was made to answer that question in LATAM FINGERS, which focused more on whether offering good advice is as effective as putting people in structured programs to follow that advice. The key finding was that the structured program was more effective.
However, researchers at The University of Texas at Dallas, The University of Iowa, and Posit Science tackled that question in a new meta-analysis—also presented at AAIC. Those researchers looked across the scientific literature at brain health studies using interventions focused on cognitive training, physical exercise, and nutrition. They built an open-source database of randomized controlled trials in those three areas—accessible to future researchers—to more easily run ongoing analyses as more studies are completed. All three interventions showed statistically significant benefits, with cognitive training having the most evidence and showing the largest numerical benefit.
The result is consistent with findings reported in The Lancet in 2025, which found: “When compared with active control, only physical exercise and cognitive training combined, and cognitive training alone, revealed significant improvement of global cognition.”
Can we better monitor individual performance?
As part of LATAM FINGERS, a sub-group tested a 10-minute online BrainHQ assessment of brain speed, memory, and executive function to evaluate how it compared to results shown from the traditional in-person, clinician-administered assessments, which can often take as long as an hour to administer. The researchers reported a significant correlation between the results from the clinician-administered battery and the 10-minute online assessment. While clinician-administered assessment remains the gold standard for evaluating patient diagnoses, the results suggest the feasibility of the online assessment for monitoring individual status, with prompts to return to higher levels of engagement with brain exercise and other brain healthy activities—especially where resource constraints make frequent traditional assessments challenging.
What about biological measures of brain health?
Another development at AAIC was the first report that brain exercises can reduce levels of a blood biomarker of beta amyloid, an indicator of Alzheimer’s disease. In the ENACT Study, researchers reported a significant improvement in Aβ42/Aβ40 ratios following BrainHQ training as compared to a control group who trained on computer games, suggesting that this form of cognitive training may influence biological pathways involved in neurodegeneration. Biomarker changes varied by gender, consistent with a growing body of evidence that men and women respond differently to Alzheimer’s-related therapies, such as amyloid-targeting drugs and cholinesterase inhibitors.
What does it all mean?
“The new data shows that it’s time to replace vague advice to ‘stay mentally active’ with precise advice to engage in specific activities that improve brain health and cognitive performance that have been proven to work in studies—often against control activities that keep people ‘mentally active’ but deliver no measurable benefit,” said Dr. Henry Mahncke, a leading cognitive training researcher and CEO of Posit Science, which makes BrainHQ. “That’s hopeful and exciting for anyone who is concerned about brain health—including me. Alzheimer’s disease runs in my family, and if you’re like me, you want real, practical, proven ways you can improve your brain health now.”
If you’re ready to try out a real, practical, and proven way to improve your brain health, it’s easy to start training with BrainHQ today. You can register and start at no cost and get a free brain training exercise per day, and then decide if you want to subscribe. And you’ll be using the brain training program that was an exciting part of the London Alzheimer’s meeting.
