A Consensus on the Brain Training Industry from the Scientific Community

As the baby boomers enter their golden years with mounting concerns about the potential loss of cognitive abilities, markets are responding with products promising to allay anxieties about potential decline. Computer-based cognitive-training software –popularly known as brain games– claim a growing share of the marketplace. The promotion of these products reassures and entices a worried public.

Consumers are told that playing brain games will make them smarter, more alert, and able to learn faster and better. In other words, the promise is that if you adhere to a prescribed regimen of cognitive exercise, you will reduce cognitive slowing and forgetfulness, and will fundamentally improve your mind and brain.

Search more than 4,900 original articles for Answers to Your Questions About Alzheimer's and Dementia

Brain Traffic Jams That Can Disappear in 30 Seconds

New study finds that blockages in fruit fly brains quickly form and dissolve; it could help treat Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s disease.

Motorists in Los Angeles, San Francisco and other gridlocked cities could learn something from the fruit fly.

Scientists have found that cellular blockages, the molecular equivalent to traffic jams, in nerve cells of the insect’s brain can form and dissolve in 30 seconds or less.

The findings, presented in the journal PLOS ONE,  could provide scientists much-needed clues to better identify and treat neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s.

Difference Found in Brain Area Linked to Memory Among College Football Players

Preliminary research finds that within a group of collegiate football players, those who experienced a concussion or had been playing for more years had smaller hippocampal volume (an area of the brain important for memory) than those with fewer years of football experience.

This according to a study in the May 14 issue of JAMA.

In addition, more years of playing football was correlated with slower reaction time.