When you see claims for an exciting new brain training finding (the headline crows “Dementia Breakthrough? Brain training game ‘significantly reduces risk’ “), you can expect to see the skeptics respond very quickly.
As the Guardian reports, the study didn’t follow rigorous definitions of dementia–it allowed participants to self-report!–and their results didn’t consistently reach statistical significance.
We ardently hope that someday we’ll find brain-training games that work. Perhaps later research will reveal these games to be effective.
For the time being, however, it seems the best we’ve got to reduce the likelihood of dementia is lifestyle changes: exercise being the best option.
I’ll see you on the jogging track tomorrow morning…
