Short Wave - Mental ‘Workouts’ Could Keep Your Brain Young

Episode Date: November 17, 2025

Scientists have found the first compelling evidence that cognitive training can boost levels of a brain chemical that typically declines as people age. The results of this 10-week study back earlier animal research showing that environments that stimulate the brain can increase levels of certain neurotransmitters. And other studies of people have suggested that cognitive training can improve thinking and memory. So how does it all work? And by how much does it all work? Here to break everything down and help you understand how to keep your brain sharp is NPR science correspondent Jon Hamilton.To try out the cognitive exercises for yourself, visit Brain HQ.Interested in more brain science? Email us your question at [e-mail] to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, shortwavers. Here's some advice for all you fitness fanatics. Never skip brain day. That's right. It's time to talk about improving your cognitive fitness. And here to lead today's master class is NPR's resident brain trainer, John Hamilton. Hey, John.

Hey, Gina. Just finishing up my prefrontal reps here. Got to keep the old cortex shredded. All right. Let me add that to the list of images. I can't unsee. Okay, John. So what's cognitive fitness exactly?

Like, are we talking wordle? You know, because I'm pretty good at wordal. Nope. Fine. What about quadratic equations? Numbers. Nope. What about like a few races in Mario Kart?

Maybe those Zelda puzzles that I do? Strike three. Those all focus on really narrow skills. You know, word recognition, number processing, throwing a turtle shell. cognitive fitness is more of a whole brain workout. You're trying to build up these broad areas like working memory, processing speed, focus. By the way, those are functions that tend to get worse as we age. Yes.

Okay. Not for me. I'm asking for a friend, John, like what sort of brain exercises do I need to do to avoid this whole brain aging thing? Okay. Let me show you something on a laptop. This is an exercise from a cognitive fitness study that we're going to talk about after the break. Okay. Here we go.

It says double decision. Right. And this is a demo, so you're going to play along with them as they tell you what happens here. Go ahead and start it. In double decision, you will identify a vehicle and locate a road sign. I'm already scared. Click the start button to begin. Okay.

Yeah. Let's try another. It's easy, right? Yeah, I can do this. I can do this. As you improve, the vehicles will disappear faster. Okay, that one. Sign is here.

Yep. That one. Signs here. This gets harder. Okay, okay, okay. I wasn't looking. It's that one. Oh.

Oh, I was way off. Oh, crap, crap, crap. Okay. That one, signs here. Happy brain training. Okay. That did get harder. It totally got harder.

Yeah, I could see the smoke coming out of your ears. It was real. I thought it was, I was like, it was like a false sense of security. I was like, oh, this is so easy. And then it just got, like, way harder. But, I mean, you get the idea, though, right? This kind of training is a lot like, you know, serious athletic training. It's all about going for the mental burn.

You know, you got to think Stairmaster set to 20. It's all about reps, you know. Today on the show, cognitive workouts to keep your brain young. Plus, how mental and physical exercise can work together to strengthen your mental muscles. You're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. So, John, this is where you tell me how my brain is. going to stay young forever, just like my face. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, maybe not forever, but there is some cool new science here. Let me tell you about a study that provides the first really compelling evidence that cognitive training can cause biological changes in the brain. Okay. So like the brain's version of washboard abs. Exactly. You've probably seen some of those brain training products on the internet. Yes.

You've got, you know, there's lumosity, elevate, peak, cognate, and then there's the one. there's the one that probably has the most science behind it. That is Brain HQ. They designed that training exercise that it was making your head explode just a few minutes ago. Until now, the evidence that those products actually work has been mostly from studies of cognitive performance. So, you know, maybe somebody was able to process information more quickly, focused for a longer period of time. This new study found changes in levels of a really important molecule in the brain. It's something called acetylcholine. Okay. I've never heard. of that before, but it sounds cool.

And now you have. Okay, awesome. Acetylcholine is both a neurotransmitter and a neuromodulator. So what it does is it carries messages around the brain, but it also affects the behavior of neurons. It neuromodulates. Unfortunately, as we get older, the levels of acetylcholine and the brain start to go down. And if you get Alzheimer's, they go way down. Wow. Okay. I talked about all that with a scientist at McGill University in Montreal. His name is Etienne de Villis-Idan-I. And here's what he said. Cognitive abilities start changing when we're about 40-45.

And it's the same for acetylcholine. For every decade after the age of 40-45, you get around 2.5% decline in this neurotransmitter in key brain areas. Oh my gosh. I'm like there. I'm so scared. And you should be. But hang on. Etienne was part of a team of scientists that thought they might be able to do something about this.

So they took 92 healthy people who were at least 65 years old. And then for the next 10 weeks, they had half of these people spend 30 minutes a day doing that double decision task, you know, the one that you just did. Okay. What did the other half do? I mean, were they just like doom scrolling on their phone like I do every night? Actually, Gina, they were taking part in another one of your favorite activities. I'll let Etienne explain. The other group was also doing type of training, well, training, like video games, if you will, like Solitaire and Candy Crush, which can be addictive.

and a lot of people play this over and over again, but it doesn't engage the brain in the same way. Okay, I don't play solitary and candy crush anymore, but I do play vampire survivors, very addictive. What did these researchers find out? Like, how did these different activities compare? The researchers used a special kind of PET scan that measured acetylcholine levels both before and after the training.

So what is this, like, special kind of PET scan? It's a PET scan where they put a special substance in your brain, brain that sort of lights up all of the acetylcholine, all these molecules of a certain type. And that way they can tell whether there's more or less being produced in the brain. Oh, that's awesome. And in this case, they focused on a brain area that's called the anterior cingulate cortex. It is involved in mental activities, like making decisions, detecting mistakes. And in people who played just the video games, there was no change in acetylcholine.

Sorry, Gina. But Etienne says in people who did the cognitive training, there was a increase. It was about 2.3%, which is not huge, but it's significant, considering that you get a 2.5% decrease per decade just with aging. In other words, Gina, brain training turned back the clock by about a decade. Wow. So you just like, you just keep up. That sounds good, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. But I wanted to check on all this with an expert on acetylcholine. So I sent the study to a guy named Mike Haslmo at Boston University. He directs the center for systems. neuroscience there. And I should say he's in his 60s. I asked Mike what he thought about the double

decision task. Well, I have to say it was compelling enough that I looked up the task myself and thought, maybe I need to be doing this task. Same, right? So I also asked him to give me some sense of how much mental boost you could get from, you know, this little acetylcholine bump. Drinking a cup of coffee is essentially directly increasing your acetylcholine levels. And I don't know the exact percentages, but you really notice quite quickly the enhancement of your cognitive function and your ability to focus. Okay. So I don't drink coffee. Now I'm thinking about that too. But do I need to use this like particular cognitive training program? Or would I get like a similar result from like a different game or a different program? Well, you might, but it's really not clear. Okay.

Brain HQ is part of a company called Posit Science that has really taken a much more academic approach to mental fitness than most of the other companies out there. There are now well over 100 academic studies that have used the brain HQ exercises. They looked at people who had all kinds of different conditions like ADHD, early dementia, traumatic brain injuries, and just normal aging. A couple of months ago, brain HQ exercises were part of this huge study done by the Alzheimer's Association. So like brain HQ, these games, did it help, like prevent Alzheimer's? Not exactly. The study was looking at whether this combination. The combination of lifestyle changes, including mental exercise, could slow down the cognitive

declines you usually see in people in their 60s and 70s. Okay. So there were more than 2,000 people in this study. It went on for two years. That's a lot. It is. It cost them about $50 million to do. Wow.

Some of the participants just got advice on how to eat better, exercise, they mentally active. The others were given a very specific diet. They were enrolled in exercise classes and they did Brain HQ cognitive training. Okay. Both groups benefited compared with, you know, typical people of their age. But the group that did intensive mental and physical exercise had better brain health overall. So like how much of that was from brain training or how much was from like that specific diet and those specific physical exercises? There's no way to really break that apart.

Yeah. One thing to keep in mind is that studies have consistently shown that physical exercise is absolutely the best thing you can do for your brain health. So researchers are experimenting with ways to combine, for example, a cardio workout with brain training. I spoke with a scientist at the University of California, San Diego, who is trying to do exactly that. She's using stationary bikes and virtual reality. Her name is Judy Pa. We tried to pair together cycling and moving through the environment. So they go through a new virtual reality task that we built.

It's a park environment, and they have to navigate through different scenes and try to remember where they're going. So they first learn it with arrows and then they have to recall it. This sounds so great. Like, I want to sign up for these clinical trials. That's part of the idea is that, you know, one of the biggest challenges with both mental and cognitive fitness programs is you've got to find something that people will keep doing even when they're not in a scientific study, right? Yeah, yeah.

So I asked another brain scientist about that when I was at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in Toronto recently. Her name is Jessica Langbaum, and she runs the. Alzheimer's Prevention Program at Banner Health in Phoenix. This is her advice on lifestyle change. If you already do the Sunday crossword puzzle and it's not challenging, maybe pick up something new, but really do something that you love to do and that you can stick to it. Find that exercise regimen that you'll adhere to and that you will continue to do.

And if you can do it with people around you, that's even better. That social interaction seems to add something to any kind of cognitive or physical exercise. Yeah, I got to join those running clubs, I guess. Exactly. And if you do, your brain will stay young forever. Forever. Thank you, John, for bringing this story. Anytime, Gina.

This episode was produced by Hannah Chin. It was edited by our showrunner Rebecca Ramirez. Tyler Jones checked the facts and Jimmy Keylee was the audio engineer. Beth Donovan is our vice president for podcasting. I'm Regina Barber. Thank you for listening to Shorewave from NPR.