Dallas— Sept. 10
Strategy-based cognitive training has the potential to reverse age-related brain decline, according to the results of a study by researchers at the Center for BrainHealth at the University of Texas at Dallas. The study examined brain and cognitive changes associated with brain training and found that complex cognitive training significantly improves cognitive brain health.
The study found that 12 hours of directed brain training can alter brain function, inducing increased blood flow, enhanced information communication across key brain regions and expansion of the structural connections between brain regions related to new learning.
Using three MRI-based measurements, researchers examined brain changes across three time points in a randomized sample of individuals aged 56 to 71. The study found three significant training-related brain changes at rest: increases in global and regional cerebral blood flow (CBF), greater synchrony in important brain networks and increased white matter integrity, which is the wiring of the brain that allows information to travel between brain cells.
The capacity to increase whole brain blood flow after complex mental training may have clinical implications in both healthy aging populations and those diagnosed with brain disease such as Alzheimer’s, according to the study.
Source: Center for BrainHealth
