UC San Francisco scientists have found a way to reverse some of the negative effects of aging on the brain, using a video game designed to improve cognitive performance in healthy older adults.
In the game (developed by the UCSF researchers), participants race a car around a winding track while a variety of road signs pop up. Drivers are instructed to keep an eye out for a specific type of sign, while ignoring all the rest, and to press a button whenever that particular sign appears.
The need to switch rapidly from driving to responding to the signs (multitasking) generates interference in the brain that undermines performance. The researchers found that this interference increases dramatically across the adult lifespan.
85-year-olds outperform novice 20-somethings
But after receiving just 12 hours of training on the game, spread over a month, the 60- to 85-year-old study participants improved their performance until it surpassed that of 20-somethings who played the game for the first time.
The training also improved the participants’ performance in two other important cognitive areas: working memory and sustained attention. And participants maintained their skills at the video game six months after the training had ended.
“The finding is a powerful example of how plastic the older brain is,” said Adam Gazzaley, MD, PhD, UCSF associate professor of neurology, physiology and psychiatry and director of the Neuroscience Imaging Center. Gazzaley co-founded the company, Akili Interactive Labs, which is developing the next generation of the video game.
Gazzaley, who has made a career out of studying how distraction affects cognitive performance, said his game, NeuroRacer, does more than any ordinary game to condition the brain. Like a good teacher, he said, NeuroRacer undermines people’s natural tendency to go on automatic pilot once they’ve mastered a skill, and pushes them further than they think they can go.
“Normally, when you get better at something, it gets easier,” he said. But with this game, “when you get better, it gets harder.”