Adults aged 65 and above showed improvements in memory by working for an hour a day for eight weeks on a computer-based programme called Brain Fitness 2.0 from Post Science, a study published on Monday said.
"The gains were equivalent to turning back the clock 10 years," lead investigator Elizabeth Zelinski of the University of Southern California was quoted as saying by Newsweek.
By contrast, participants who were given documentaries to watch showed only marginal improvement, it added. Brain Fitness doesn't teach memory tricks, but instead asks users to discriminate between similar sounds and follow auditory commands, in a series of increasingly difficult tests.
The ultimate effect is to sharpen the brain's systems of attention lthough it's not clear yet how long after training the benefits will last, researchers say but admit that there are limits, Newsweek said. Mental workouts, too, encourage the formation of neural connections.
Last month Peter Penzes at Northwestern University published a study showing that brain activity boosts the function of a protein called kalirin-7, whose function had been unclear. But, the magazine says, the problem with traditional memory exercises has been that practicing one type of task rarely improves performance on others.
Working crossword puzzles doesn't help you remember a shopping list. Noting that there are many hypotheses about why powers of recall go awry over time, the magazine says it is clear that both committing new information to memory and retrieving it become more difficult.
"Paradoxically, the main result we see in brain imaging is that older people have greater brain activation, not less, probably because they're compensating," Michael Rugg, director of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at UC Irvine is quoted as saying.
For example, young people accomplish verbal memory tasks by using the language areas on the left side of the brain, while older people tend to pull in the mirror-image areas on the right side, too. This approach gets the job done, but with less efficiency and less precision.
Stating that some potential pills are now advancing to clinical trials, Newsweek says one unlikely example is nicotine. Researchers, the report says, have long known that it's easier to form memories when you're paying greater attention, and as smokers will attest, nicotine helps.
But nicotine from cigarettes and patches also has negative effects on the cardiovascular system, raising heart rate and blood pressure. Memory Pharmaceuticals Corp, it says, has devised a compound that selectively tickles nicotine receptors in the brain.
"You get rid of the bad effects and retain the good," chief scientific officer David Lowe is quoted as saying. Last month the company announced the results of a small trial in 80 Alzheimer's patients, who performed better on tests of long-term memory, working memory and speed of cognitive processing after taking the pill once a day for eight weeks.
Larger trials are still needed, meaning that it could be years before the drug comes to market, if ever. In the meantime, other companies are exploring different ways to enhance memory formationfrom increasing the intensity of brain signaling to prolonging the activity of genes that encode memories.