Can Brain Training Ward off Dementia?

Many people focus on exercise to improve the health of their body. This could mean regular walks, running, biking, doing yoga and/or lifting weights.

But we also know that these types of physical activities can help maintain your brain health too. Beyond physical exercise, can mental exercise also help your brain?

“Brain training,” or cognitive training, is designed to stimulate one or more of your cognitive skills, such as memory, processing speed and problem-solving.

The concept of “brain training” can range from formalized, structured activities to classes, from computerized programs to challenging activities you regularly pursue on your own time, such as learning a new language, playing online word games or doing Sudoku.

While the phrase “brain training” is used by a variety of people, in research studies it often means a very specific, structured type of program—not just doing a daily crossword puzzle.

Could some type of brain training not only keep your brain healthier but also hold off or prevent dementia? Researchers continue to investigate the possibility, but the scientific findings are still relatively new and many questions remain.

What We Know

For years, researchers have asked if brain training could not only improve thinking skills, but if it could also improve someone’s abilities in daily life. In other words, could these very specific brain training tasks in studies “transfer” to the real world and help improve your brain outside of a research setting? If so, the next question is: Could brain training help prevent dementia?

Early research results created a lot of excitement about the potential benefits of brain training. It showed that, for healthy adults, performance on brain training tasks reliably improved. The research also showed smaller benefits on similar tasks that they did not specifically train on.

At this point, even though the science was in early days, some companies began selling products and making promises about the benefits of brain training. Claims included that brain training could protect against cognitive decline from age and disease and reduce cognitive problems that had occurred because of stroke and head injury.

But the science did not support these claims. The largest and most lasting benefits for brain training were shown for healthy adults, not people with cognitive problems who may have needed it the most.

Promising New Research

Recently, a group of researchers set out to examine the possibility that cognitive training could lower the risk of being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD). They linked data from the Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly (ACTIVE) study of older adults to Medicare claims that included ADRD.

The results showed that older adults who participated in a specific speed-training version of cognitive training had a 25% lower risk of being diagnosed with ADRD over a 20-year period. The training was two hourly sessions per week over six weeks and then “boosters” of training at the 11-month mark and the 35-month mark.

The new study suggests there’s a cumulative benefit to incorporating healthy actions over the course of your life.

“This is a really big deal,” said Marilyn Albert, PhD, professor of neurology and director of the Division of Cognitive Neuroscience and the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. Dr. Albert was a co-author for the study, which was published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia.

The study also showed that the participants who did the initial speed training but not the later boosters did not seem to experience the benefits. According to Dr. Albert, the booster sessions seemed to reinforce the brain connections that were generated during the original speed training sessions.

This suggests there’s a cumulative benefit to incorporating healthy actions over the course of your life, said Christine Belden, PsyD, the neuropsychology director for Banner Research in Sun City and Phoenix, Arizona.

Overall, the results were very interesting, said Stephanie Towns, PsyD, an associate professor of neurology at the Yale School of Medicine. But she cautioned about the risks of changing behavior based on a single research study. “I wouldn’t rely on it until there’s more information,” she said.

However, Dr. Albert said she would recommend this type of speed training because it’s not time-consuming and was shown to be beneficial in a randomized-controlled trial setting. The exact type of speed training program that was included in the study is Double Decision, which is part a subscription-based brain-training program. The program adapts to the user’s success, becoming more challenging as they go along.

“The task [in this study] pushes you more than what you do in daily life,” she said. “It’s more than doing crossword puzzles and more than going to a lecture. It’s more than reading a book that’s challenging, and it’s doing it in a completely different way. It’s a divided attention task, and that drives implicit learning.”

Other Ways to Emphasize Brain Health

Many factors can drive the damage that can lead to dementia, including age and genetics, as well as preventable or modifiable risk factors.

“Anything that is cognitively stimulating is always going to be better than not. So, reading a book, playing a game, or solving a puzzle is always going to be better than sitting and watching TV.”

Other research bolsters that point. In fact, the ACTIVE Study actually builds on previous research that focused on a number of behaviors that can potentially influence the health of the brain.

For example, the Finnish Geriatric Intervention Study to Prevent Cognitive Impairment and Disability (FINGER) was a randomized clinical trial that explored modifiable risk factors—things you could change in your life—on cognitive decline in at-risk older adults.

Researchers compared an intervention that consisted of changes in diet, exercise, cognitive training and vascular risk monitoring (like blood pressure and cholesterol levels) to an intervention consisting of general health advice. They found that the multidomain approach could maintain or even improve cognitive function in these older adults.

Another more recent clinical trial known as POINTER (the U.S. Study to Protect Brain Health Through Lifestyle Intervention to Reduce Risk) also found that healthy behavior can have a significant positive impact on the brain.

Published in the journal JAMA in 2025, the study examined the impact of two lifestyle interventions—one structured and more intense and the other self-guided and less intense—that combined nutrition, exercise, cognitive challenge, social activity and health monitoring on the participants’ global cognitive functioning.

The researchers found that both interventions helped, but the structured intervention was even more effective in protecting the brain from some of the normal age-related decline that tends to occur.

Make It Multidimensional

Research suggests that brain training is only one part of an approach that incorporates several different things to staying healthy. If you’re embracing other strategies—such as eating a healthy diet, staying physically active, working on your stress levels and maintaining a strong social support system—those also matter.

In other words, don’t neglect other aspects of your health in pursuit of specialized brain training.

“Think of brain training as just one tool in your toolbelt for how you can positively impact your own health,” Dr. Belden said.

Also, be mindful about how you set goals. Think accessible and attainable, she suggested. “Don’t put so much pressure on yourself that making change is difficult because the goal is too big.”

Small changes can help too. Instead of giving up on a positive activity because you don’t have a lot of time, change your perspective. Find something you enjoy doing and keep doing it, but don’t be afraid to level it up and challenge yourself.

“My general response is anything that is cognitively stimulating is always going to be better than not,” Dr. Towns said. “So, reading a book, playing a game, or solving a puzzle is always going to be better than sitting and watching TV.”