GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Older adults who received as few as 10 sessions of mental training show long-lasting improvements in reasoning and speed of processing skills 10 years after the intervention, according to UF Health researchers with the Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly, or ACTIVE, study.
The study findings appear today in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
"Our prior research suggested that the benefits of the training could last up to five years, or even seven years, but no one had ever reported 10-year maintenance in mental training in older adults," said ACTIVE researcher Michael Marsiske, Ph.D., an associate professor of clinical and health psychology at the University of Florida College of Public Health and Health Professions. "One of the reasons that this is surprising has to do with how little training we did with participants, about 10 to 18 sessions. This would be like going to the gym for between five and 10 weeks, never going again, and still seeing positive effects a decade later."
