Doubts cast on ‘dementia-slowing’ app

Dementia charities have questioned claims that a new ‘brain-training’ ipad app can help to reverse the early signs of the illness.

Researchers at Cambridge University said that its Game Show app (pictured) improved the memory of patients with possible early dementia by 40 per cent. In the game, players win a gold coin by matching geometric patterns with different locations.

Forty-two patients took part in the four-week study. Half played the game for two hours a week in a clinic, while the other half played no games. Memory tests at the end of the study showed that the app players made around a third fewer errors. One of the app’s co-inventors, Professor Barbara Sahakian, said that “there’s increasing evidence that brain training can be beneficial for boosting cognition and brain health”.

But other researchers urged caution. Robert Howard, Professor of Old Age Psychiatry at UCL, said: “This was an uncontrolled and open study, and so it’s difficult to know how much significance we should place on the small improvements in neuropsychological test scores observed.”

He added that despite lots of studies, it’s still unclear whether brain-training apps and exercises “do anything positive to improve cognition in older people or people with Alzheimer’s”.

Dr Carol Routledge, director of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, called for future tests to take place in patients’ homes to rule out the chance that improvements in memory are due to visiting a clinic and meeting researchers.