Can brain training “rewire” the brain to prevent dementia? What about repair the brain following an injury? Or turn back the clock on brain aging? For many years, most medical professionals didn’t think so. But three studies published in the past six month strongly suggest that they were wrong.
The first of these studies showed that a special type of brain exercise that helps improve processing speed can slash the 20-year risk of dementia by 25%. A second study showed that speed exercises can physically rewire a brain that has been scarred by traumatic injury. Both studies used brain exercises found in the BrainHQ app from Posit Science. The third showed that using BrainHQ could increase the production of an important brain chemical that declines as we age.
“These studies suggest the secret to a resilient brain may lie in how fast you can train your brain to operate,” observed Dr. Henry Mahncke, CEO of Posit Science. “That is a fundamental goal of the BrainHQ exercises,” he noted, “and something that sets BrainHQ apart from other brain training programs.”
Brain training prevented dementia
The first of these groundbreaking studies was published earlier this month. It was a 20-year follow-up to a large, gold-standard study called the ACTIVE study that compared three different types of brain training. By taking a look at Medicare data, researchers found that one of them—a “speed training” exercise now only available as Double Decision in BrainHQ—led to a 25% reduction in Alzheimer’s and other dementias, even though the participants only did about 23 hours of training over three years.
It repaired injuries
The second recent study was an imaging study done at NYU. It took images of the brains of people who had experienced brain injuries—and cognitive loss along with it. Those people then trained with speed-of-processing exercises from BrainHQ, and the researchers re-imaged their brains. They found that using the exercises actually repaired the “white matter” in the brain.
What is white matter? It’s made up of nerve fibers that connect different parts of the brain. By the time we’re 20, we have about 100 miles of these fibers in our brains! It’s called white matter because the nerve fibers are covered in a fatty protective cover called myelin—which is white.
The recovery the participants experienced wasn’t just something the researchers saw in their brain images. They also showed cognitive gains: they improved their processing speed, attention, working memory, and everyday functioning.
And it turned back the clock
Another landmark imaging study called the INHANCE study was published last October by researchers at McGill University in Canada. It showed that using BrainHQ exercises increased the production of a very important brain chemical that is known to decrease with age, and plummet in dementia. The training pushed back the clock on this chemical production by about 10 years. As Dr. Etienne de Villers-Sidani, the lead researcher of the study, noted, it was “the first time any intervention, drug or non-drug, has been shown to do that in humans.”
What do these studies have in common?
“What ties the studies together is how they induce brain plasticity—the brain’s ability to change, chemically, structurally, and functionally,” Dr. Mahncke observed. “The speed-of-processing exercises are customized to each user and challenge the brain to engage plasticity—whether we are looking at prevention, recovery, or even improving peak performance.”
“We’ll look back at research from the past six months as a ‘sea change’ in how we address neurological issues,” Dr. Mahncke added. “While those of us on the front lines of neuroplasticity research have long maintained these types of gains were possible, advances in imaging, like those at McGill and NYU—and in our understanding of the power of plasticity—will now drive progress at unprecedented speed.”
That’s good news for all of us!
