A brain training computer game developed by British neuroscientists has been shown to improve the memory of patients in the very earliest stages of dementia and could help such patients avert some symptoms of cognitive decline. Researchers who developed the game show-like app and tested its effects on cognition and motivation in a small trial found that patients who played the game over a period of a month had around a 40% improvement in their memory scores. "We hope to extend these findings in future studies of healthy ageing and mild Alzheimer’s disease," said George Savulich, who led the study at Cambridge University. Dementia is a huge global health problem. The World Health Organisation says about 47.5-million people had dementia in 2015, and that number is rising rapidly as life expectancy increases and societies age. The condition is incurable and there are few drugs that can alleviate the symptoms — which include declining memory, thinking, behaviour, navigational and spatia...
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