Brain Games May Help to Improve Memory

The question of whether you can prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s disease with online brain games has been hotly debated in recent years, with skeptics saying the only thing they improve is gaming skills. But new study from Cambridge University suggests that memory games can lead to improvement in memory. The study used cognitive training on a iPad on over 40 patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and concluded that episodic memory robustly improved.

Research participants in the cognitive training group played the memory game for eight one-hour sessions over a four-week period.  The players were challenged to associate different geometric patterns with different locations. Each correct answer allowed the player to earn gold coins. The better the player got, the higher the number of geometric patterns introduced. The results showed the patients who played the game made a third fewer mistakes, needed fewer trials and improved their memory scores by as much as 40 percent.

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