Memory Drills May Not Help with Those ‘Senior Moments’

My particular "senior moments" usually consist of inability to remember someone's name, although I can often remember their first letter. Most people my age have similar or more distressing moments from time to time. And, of course, we worry that this is the first step in the slide from normal cognitive aging, to mild cognitive impairment (MCI), to early Alzheimer’s, to full-blown dementia.  Not surprisingly, there’s a demand for computerized memory drills and other cognitive training programs, in the hope that one can halt or reverse the downhill slide.  Researchers from Zurich, Switzerland, have analyzed published reports of studies of such programs, and reported their findings in The Cochrane Library. 

The medical literature from 1970 to 2007 was searched for trials of the effects of cognitive training on different areas of mental function – memory, executive function, attention, and speed.  The selected trials had to be randomized, well-controlled, and involving healthy older people and people with MCI. 

There were 36 studies that included 2,229 subjects.  The time in training sessions varied from 6 to 125 hours, with studies lasting one day to two years.  Training sessions consisted of exercises using word drills, and so on, while some subjects labeled ‘active controls’ took part in discussions about art or similar subjects.  Only results for studies of memory were sufficient to be pooled for meta-analyses.  Analyses were done separately for healthy older adults and individuals with MCI.

For healthy seniors, immediate and delayed verbal recall improved significantly through training when compared to no-training controls.  However, there was no difference in improvements seen with specific memory-training and with ‘active control’ conditions.

For those people with MCI, analyses showed the same pattern.  Again, improvements in verbal memory was seen with both specific training exercises and with discussion exercises, compared with no training at all, but one method was no better than the other.  It can be concluded that seniors should save their time and money and avoid specific memory exercises, and spend more time in friendly social interactions with intellectual activities – discussions, meetings, etc.  Maybe more parties?