Brain Training and Dementia – Education & Teacher Conferences Skip to main content

Brain Training and Dementia

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…


Recent Blogs

The Shelf-Life of Research: When Education Theories Evolve…
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson

To most of us, research conclusions have an air of...

Enjoyment or Skill? The Case of Reading [Repost]
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson

Student motivation has always been a concern; never more so...

Book Review: 10 to 25, by David Yeager
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson

As long as humans have lived into their teens, adults...