Working in Movement

In general, learning can slow down with age. Plasticity, the brain's ability to "rewire" itself, and learning seem to go hand in hand at any age. But with aging, though some portion (maybe a lot) of the plasticity remains, the time it takes to learn and remember things can slow way down. Some of the biggest, most visible impacts can show up with the cognitive skills, like reading or working puzzles. According to Exercising the Brain, there's some evidence that reading the newspaper or doing crossword puzzles can help here. But training sessions for older folks using a new computer program from Posit Science aims at restoring some of the plasticity in a way that could slow the decline by ten years or so.

The sessions use case narratives that are played slowly and then progressively faster. It offers a challenge by making the listening task hard, but not impossible. And it is this challenge that triggers the brain's plasticity.

Experts say this level of challenge is a crucial component for triggering the brain's plasticity, which underlies improvements in processing speed. "This is what good rehab therapists do, but most people don't have the money to do that," says Michael Kilgard, a neuroscientist at the University of Texas at Dallas, who works with Posit. "We think it's possible to deliver this with a computer, rather than one-on-one."

Pretty neat, at least within the context of the training sessions, but no one knows how long the effects last. And it's not clear whether the gained skills can be transferred to life outside the training sessions:

The key question for Posit and other cognitive training programs is how well the specific training improves daily activities, such as shopping or driving. "The thing that eludes programs now is how do you train people in one area [such as working memory] and get improvement in another area [such as following conversations in a noisy room]," says Jeffrey Elias, a health science administrator at the National Institute on Aging in Bethesda, MD. Today, a typical training program focuses on memory tricks, such as mnemonics.

But even if the skills gained in the sessions last a while and can be applied to everyday activities outside the context of the training sessions, it's not likely to be a runaway best seller. There are some potential roadblocks to widespread adoption, namely that it seems to take a lot of time and effort to see a difference. This is not deterring Posit, which will soon offer an entire brain gym.

One of my thoughts as I read this article was that it would be really interesting to investigate across skill types to see if plasticity improvements generalize to other skill areas. For example, does an improvement in sensory-motor plasticity also imply an improvement in cognitive learning or improving cognitive tasks or vice versa? Moshe Feldenkrais held that it does, but no research that I'm aware of has even begun to investigate. But Posit may be might also begin investigating something along these lines:

In addition the auditory program, the company is building four other tools to train different cognitive systems: vision, executive control, balance and mobility, and sensory-guided motor control.

It'll be interesting to see what they come up with.