(2026-02-14) Kind Of Amazing: A Brain Game Can Cut Dementia Risk By 25 Percent, Study Shows

‘Kind of amazing.’ A brain game can cut dementia risk by 25 percent, study shows. People who spent about two hours a week pinpointing flashing objects on a computer screen dramatically lowered their risk of dementia — including Alzheimer’s — 20 years later.

from a study that enrolled 2,800 healthy adults ages 65 and older across six states, including Massachusetts, beginning in the late 1990s.

In the study, called ACTIVE, participants were randomly assigned to one of three training groups or a control group that received no brain training.

• The speed training group
• one that focused on memory
• another on reasoning

Double Decision, a computer-based brain training, exercises speed, divided attention, and peripheral vision by focusing on one of two center targets and one on the periphery; as speed increases, center targets get more similar and peripheral distractions multiply

Participants were initially assigned five weeks of training, twice a week, for about an hour per session. Then, approximately half of the participants in each training group were randomly chosen for eight additional booster sessions, with four at the end of the first year, and another four after the third year of the study.

For ACTIVE’s 20-year follow-up, researchers scoured participants’ medical records through Medicare

They found those assigned to the memory and reasoning training showed no significant reduction in Alzheimer’s risk.

But those assigned to speed training, plus booster sessions, showed the 25 percent lower risk

they theorize that speed training, unlike that for memory and reasoning, drives a specific change in the brain, called procedural learning. Similar to learning how to ride a bicycle, procedural learning rewires the brain across visual, motor, and other systems. It teaches a skill that, once learned, is not forgotten and can be easily resumed years later.

The speed training used in ACTIVE was originally developed to help older people keep driving safely. It focused on improving visual speed and accuracy. Researchers suspected from the start that speed training would help with driving because they knew that as we age, the brain slows in its ability to process information.

This is the training, called Double Decision from BrainHQ, that’s similar to the one used in the ACTIVE study.

Since the study launched, Posit Science acquired the technology and updated the software, now called Double Decision by BrainHQ. The version available today for consumers is considerably more sophisticated than what volunteers used in the study.

Emma Duerden, a neuroscience and learning disorders researcher at Western University in Ontario who was not involved in the ACTIVE study, isn’t keen on computer brain training because it’s sedentary. There are other activities, she said, that can mimic such brain training, such as pickleball, which requires players to focus on a fast-moving ball while also being aware of where their partner is in the periphery.

there are other things we can do to lower dementia risk, like getting adequate sleep at night.

Other brain training studies have shown mixed results.

Willment and other researchers not involved in the ACTIVE trial noted some caveats to the study’s findings.

ACTIVE participants were healthy older adults who may not be representative of the general aging population. Similarly, those selected for the effective booster training sessions were the ones who were able to first complete at least eight initial speed training sessions

The specialists also noted many other ways can lower dementia risk.

Two years ago, the Lancet Commission, a group of experts in brain health and aging, published a landmark dementia prevention analysis.
14 risk factors.
Their list includes addressing vision and hearing loss, as well as reducing high cholesterol, blood pressure, and obesity, and encouraging exercise and “cognitively stimulating activities in midlife.”
It did not, however, specifically endorse brain training.