Brain Games Can Help Older Adults Stay Sharp and Multitask

A study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found online brain games can help older adults cognitively multitask, reports Earth.com . "We discovered that people in the upper age ranges who completed specific training tasks were able to beef up their brain's ability to switch between tasks in the game at a level similar to untrained 20- and 30-year-olds," says the University of California, Irvine's Mark Steyvers. The researchers worked with the Lumosity online brain training game platform, randomly choosing a sample from 1,000 Lumosity members 21 to 80 years old who played a task-switching game in which players switch between identifying shapes and movement. Users were grouped into a 21-to-80 cohort who completed fewer than 60 sessions, and a 71-to-80 group who completed at least 1,000 sessions. Users in the second cohort who had completed many different sessions could match the scores and performance of younger users in the first group who had not played much. Their performance declined compared to younger users that completed more than 10 sessions. Nevertheless, the findings suggest online brain games could help enhance mental performance and cognitive multitasking.