A new study has revealed the potential benefits of a specific type of game, revealing that people who play for at least 23 hours could reduce their risk of dementiaby 25%. The results also confirm that brain training interventions can be beneficial in the fight against the disease.

Nearly 3,000 people aged 65 and older took part in the study, with researchers following them for 20 years, suggesting specific exercises and monitoring the exact number of hours participants took part in them. Ultimately, a computer-based cognitive speed game was linked with the biggest reduction in dementia risk.

The findings were published this week in the Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Translational Research and Clinical Interventionsjournal. Researchers first enrolled participants in 1998 in the Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly study (ACTIVE).

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Participants took part in one of three types of cognitive training through brain games:

• Memory


• Reasoning


• Speed of processing

All three groups received up to 10 sessions of 60-75 minutes of cognitive training over five to six weeks. Half of the participants were also given booster sessions, providing them with a total of 23 hours of training over a three-year period according to NBC News. There was also a control group that didn’t receive any training.

During the follow-up period 20 years later, researchers found that people in the speed-training group who got the booster sessions were 25% less likely to have been diagnosed with dementia than those in the control group.

This was the only intervention that had a meaningful difference compared to the control group. The researchers believe this could be because the speed training was an adaptive game.

The computer-based speed game required people to quickly find visual information on a computer screen and handle increasingly complex tasks within shorter time periods. It changed the level of challenge for each participant, so people who were fast dealt with faster challenges and people who struggled started with slower levels.

“Seeing that boosted speed training was linked to lower dementia risk two decades later is remarkable because it suggests that a fairly modest nonpharmacological intervention can have long-term effects,” said Marilyn Albert, Ph.D., the corresponding study author and director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Johns Hopkins Medicine.

“Even small delays in the onset of dementia may have a large impact on public health and help reduce rising health care costs.”

She highlighted that more studies are needed to understand the cause behind these results and explain why the reasoning and memory games didn’t have the same associations.

The ACTIVE study previously shared results after a 10-year follow-up, which showed that people who did the speed training had a 29% lower incidence of dementia compared to the control group and each booster session a person got reduced their risk even more.