What exactly is cognitive speed training? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Among a cohort of 2800 people, those who received cognitive speed training compared to usual care or memory and reasoning training we less likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease 20 years later. That’s according to a study by Johns Hopkins Alzheimer’s disease expert Marilyn Albert and colleagues.

Albert: This particular task is demanding. You're looking at a computer screen trying to identify objects that are in the center of the screen and then also there are things around that object and you're trying to locate them in space. So it's complicated, it's what we call a task of divided attention because you're switching your attention between these different things on the screen. It is demanding and to do it for an hour twice a week is a lot but in this case it was clear that if you did it for just six weeks and then a booster session after a year and after three years really made a difference.    :33

Albert says this is the first study of its kind and reduced risk by 25%. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.