Overview
- The NIH-funded ACTIVE trial enrolled about 2,800 adults aged 65 and older in the late 1990s and randomized them to speed, memory, reasoning training or no training, with results published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Translational Research & Clinical Interventions.
- Only participants who completed the speed-of-processing program plus randomly assigned booster sessions showed a significant reduction in dementia diagnoses, whereas memory and reasoning training showed no effect.
- Speed training without boosters did not significantly change risk, supporting a dose-dependent benefit confined to those who received additional sessions.
- Dementia outcomes were identified from Medicare claims over two decades, following an initial ~10 sessions of 60–75 minutes over five weeks and up to eight booster sessions at roughly one and three years for some participants.
- The speed task used was Double Decision, now sold by Posit Science’s BrainHQ, and outside experts welcomed the long-term randomized evidence but urged caution due to reliance on claims data, study exclusions and subgroup findings, with mechanisms such as implicit learning or altered connectivity still unproven.