USF researchers focus on brain's aging

Audrey Bartley hated what Alzheimer's disease did to her aunt and grandmother.

She swore to remain active and do whatever was necessary to avoid the same eventual outcome: a sedentary and increasingly narrow physical and mental existence.

So at 75, Bartley is playing computer games.

"I feel that as you age, you need to know all you can to keep your daily living in good stead," the Tampa resident says of the twice-weekly activity.

But Bartley's gaming goes beyond racing go-carts and killing aliens. As part of ongoing research at the University of South Florida's School of Aging Studies, she volunteered to have electrodes measure her brain waves, and she promised to visit a computer lab every week to play games aimed at boosting her cognitive skills.

For Bartley, the experience - which ended in June - was personal. But for USF researchers tracking her progress, she's building concrete evidence for a field the National Institutes of Health recently said is mostly "an abundance of theories."

The notion that brain games can keep you sharp is not new. And with an estimated 5.3 million Americans diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and an even larger number thought to suffer from mild cognitive impairment, people are gobbling up anything that claims to help. And companies wanting to make a profit are popping up every day.

Without serious research, however, older Americans have no way of knowing if the money and time they spend on brain fitness computer games make any difference, says Jerri Edwards, a USF assistant professor and researcher.

"The hard part is knowing what games work," Edwards says.

The NIH in late April said a review of existing science found there's little that "definitely establishes" that games provide positive therapeutic effects for older Americans. The few games found to show "modest benefits" to brain function in the NIH study include those in the ongoing USF study.

At USF, researchers are following 12 volunteers at a time, for 12 weeks at a time. Once an initial brain wave assessment is done, participants play cognitive fitness games twice a week. The games from Posit Science, with names like "Bird Safari," "Jewel Diver" and "Road Tour," involve a lot of watching and remembering where images flash on and off the screen.

Participants like Bartley know the lighthearted games - part of software packages called Insight, Brain Fitness and DriveSmart - have a serious purpose. And while many think brain games mostly target memory and reasoning, the local researchers actually are more interested in assessing visual processing speed and peripheral vision.

Those terms translate to real-life application, USF's Edwards says. "Speed of processing" for example, is simply the time it takes for a driver to see a stoplight switch to red and hit the brakes.

Peripheral vision skills honed in the games paid off for Bartley just weeks into the study. On her way to the computer lab recently, Bartley caught, just in the corner of her eye, the sight of another driver swerving into her lane. She's certain computer gaming "stretched" her peripheral vision.

The USF study is just a baby step in the emerging study of cognitive fitness; it could be years before there's any definitive answer about the effect brain fitness games have on the mind. Thousands of people and years of follow-up may be necessary, Edwards says.

But Bartley says she doesn't need to wait years for results. Tests done at the end of her 10-week-long game experiment showed a 56 percent improvement in attention and 68 percent boost in peripheral vision.

She's certain she feels sharper and better about her physical and mental well-being. That's all the evidence she needs right now.

"You can't just relax. You have to keep moving," she says. "You have to keep your mind going."