Keep your mind agile: Play brain games to ward off cognitive decline

Playing games such as Brain HQ or chess, which challenge cognitive skills, can help lower the risk of dementia, memory loss and other brain-related diseases.

Playing games such as Brain HQ or chess or those on computer that challenge cognitive skills, can help lower the risk of dementia, memory loss and other brain-related diseases.

Games that make people think can act as an insulation against depression, claim researchers.(Shutterstock)

In a first, researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have managed to reduce people’s risk for dementia with the help of a computerised brain training program.

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According to the team, the training nearly halved the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease and other devastating forms of cognitive and memory loss in older adults a decade after they completed it.

Medical journals report that if the surprising finding holds up, the intervention would be the first of any kind, including drugs, diet, and exercise, to do that.

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Researchers added that the games like Brain HQ, which was used in the study, can also help prevent against depression because they get people up, moving and thinking.

The study has been presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Toronto.

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