Memory improvement was measured about one week after the visual perception training ended. Posit Science was co-founded by Michael Merzenich, PhD, a leader in brain plasticity research and an emeritus professor at UCSF. Gazzaley's team worked with researchers at Posit Science Corp., a producer and promoter of brain fitness programs. "We zeroed in on one specific regimen, and we can see that at least with this approach, some brain fitness program claims may be warranted." There are many brain fitness programs being marketed, but there has been little rigorous testing and evaluations of their effectiveness, Gazzaley said. "The study shows that perceptual improvements with simple discrimination training can transfer to improved working memory in older adults, and it also shows that this increase in memory accuracy is linked to changes at the neural level." Gazzaley is associate professor of neurology, physiology and psychiatry at UCSF. "This confirms our understanding that the brains of older adults, like those of young people, are 'plastic' - the brain can change in response to focused training," said Adam Gazzaley, MD, PhD, director of the Neuroscience Imaging Center at UCSF and senior author of the research paper. The research is being published in the journal PLoS ONE on July 14, 2010. The people who improved the most in the visual training showed the biggest drop in neural activity - as if the brain didn't have to work as hard to take in information. After the training, activity had decreased in a key brain area involved in processing visual input. The researchers recorded participants' brain activity before and after the visual perception training, and found a direct link between improved performance and changes in brain activity. If improvements in a simple perception skill can transfer to a higher level function such as memory, as this research found, then other interventions might further improve brain function in aging people, the scientists say. It is essential to accomplish immediate tasks, such as engaging in conversation with several people. Working memory is the ability to hold information in mind for brief periods. Few brain training programs have been subjected to such rigorous research evaluation to reveal such a transfer of benefits, the researchers say. After ten hours of training, they not only improved their perceptual abilities significantly, but also increased the accuracy of their visual working memory by about ten percent - bringing them up to the level of younger adults.
In the study, healthy older participants trained on a computer game designed to boost visual perception.
0 kommentar(er)
