Scope

Cognitive control abilities decline with age, with limited evidence that cognitive training can help. Here we designed a custom designed video game to assess and remediate observed deficiencies.

What we did

Older adults (60+ years of age) played our game (NeuroRacer) for 4 weeks, completing a battery of behavioral and neural assessments to evidence changes in cognitive control.

Results

Training resulted in performance benefits on untrained tasks of attention & working memory, with neural changes correlating with these improvements and the persistence of these training effects 6 months later.

Implications

These findings highlight the potential plasticity of cognitive control systems and provide evidence of how a video game like intervention can serve as a powerful tool for cognitive enhancement in a targeted population.

More Information

For more information about the project, please visit: http://gazzaleylab.ucsf.edu/neuroscience-projects/neuroracer/

To contact a study team member, please email: [email protected]