A study by the University of California, the possibility of improving short-term visual memory in the elderly through a specific program, at the first attempt of its kind to measure the mental performance with changes in neural activity resulting from the cognitive training program.

He trained the healthy elderly participants of a video game designed to enhance visual perception was found after ten hours of training, the cognitive abilities have not improved significantly, but also have also increased the accuracy of immediate visual memory 10%, which bring them closer to the performance of the brains of young people.

Indicated that there is only a small number of cognitive training programs that have been carefully evaluated to verify the positive impact of China with respect to the memory responsible for the maintenance of information the brain for short periods, which are necessary to accomplish the immediate tasks such as talking with several individuals.

Participated in the study were two groups of elderly people do not suffer symptoms of dementia and aged between sixty and

89 an average of 72 years, mostly academics from the middle class have participated in the first group training and the second for comparison were also conducted for the final memory tests without the training visual with reference to a range of fitness of mind comparable to the level of cognitive normal elderly .

Nature of the training
Both groups received initial test of immediate memory, requires control points moving across a computer screen followed by a short notice, and then retest to verify that remind them of the direction of movement of points.

According to the results of the study - which published the journal Public Library of Science - repeat the memory test of the two groups after the group's participation in the training of the first optical Perceptual for ten hours asking the participants to distinguish between different forms on the computer screen.

Training program has been designed to improve the skill levels of participants as high difficulty of the task gradually, with continued training forty minutes each time, and given three to five times a week, for a period between three and five weeks.

Has improved the ability of all participants trained to distinguish the different forms of animation after that, the researchers measured improved memory after one week of the training is completed cognitive visual, but the researchers did not evaluate the duration of the improvement in memory after an interruption of training.

Optimism for the future
The researchers looked forward with great optimism towards the development of the idea on the assumption that the improvement in cognitive skill is simple and can be moved to higher cognitive function as memory, the horizon remains open to raising the performance of other brain functions in the elderly.

And may reinforce this optimism, the researchers recorded brain activity of study participants before and after training, cognitive-visual and noticed a direct link between improved performance and changes in brain activity.

Has been shown that the activity of the brain - after training - President of the decline in area related to processing visual inputs with people showed the most improvement in visual training, a significant reduction in neural activity, which means that the brain is no longer obliged to incurring the difficulties to comprehend the information.

According to Dr. Adam Ghazali - a professor of medicine, psychological and nervous system physiology and director of photography nervous at the university and the first author of the study - the plasticity of the brains of the elderly and usability is no different from the brains of young people, the brain changes in response to the training center.