[00:00.00]This weekend, the crossword puzzle marks its hundredth birthday. 
[00:04.28]First published in a New York newspaper, it's become a daily ritual for many and even been rumored to help stave off dementia. 
[00:12.09]But there isn't much evidence to back up that claim.
[00:15.10]On the other hand, special correspondent Jake Schoneker reports on new research using video games to sharpen an aging mind.
[00:23.81]Fifty-seven-year-old Ashley Wolff has been a self-employed children's author and illustrator for 25 years, working out of her small home studio in San Francisco. 
[00:34.34]She says she loves being her own boss, but that working from home can be a challenge.
[00:38.83]Working from home allows me really to just let my attention deficit problem fly.
[00:45.78]Like many people her age, she's recently found herself forgetting things more often, and getting easily distracted from work. 
[00:51.83]She was worried about these problems getting worse as she got older, especially because her mother, at age 85, was beginning to exhibit signs of Alzheimer's disease.
[01:00.99]My sister and I are watching our mother kind of lose her memory. 
[01:05.34]And we thought, gee, wow, she always did the New York times crossword puzzle, and always seemed so sharp, and here she is, none of that helped her. 
[01:16.23]And we thought, we should try something.
[01:18.63]So she decided so try cognitive training, a new breed of video game designed to exercise the brain. 
[01:24.73]She now gets a daily reminder to log on to her laptop for a 15-minute mental workout.
[01:30.48]She wants a BLT and coffee. He wants a garden salad.
[01:38.53]In this game, called "Familiar Faces," Wolff is a waitress at a cafe. 
[01:42.99]She has to remember the names of people who come in, as well as what they order.
[01:46.44]Cheeseburger.
[01:48.61]"Familiar Faces" is one of many games designed by Lumosity, a San Francisco based startup that launched in 2007. 
[01:55.86]The company markets itself as a kind of gym for the brain, complete with monthly membership fees.
[02:01.92]The service creates a personalized training program for users based on their needs that includes exercises for attention, speed, and memory. 
[02:10.26]On most days, Wolff will play five different games selected for her by the program. 
[02:15.11]Even though her memory isn't what it used to be, she says she's noticed a modest improvement since she started training. 
[02:22.22]Increasing evidence from the field of neuroscience suggests it's never too late for the brain to change.
[02:28.12]Companies like Lumosity have built a billion-dollar business out of a very simple premise: 
[02:33.51]that no matter your age, you can improve your brain's performance through cognitive training.
[02:37.72]Joe Hardy, the head of the science team at Lumosity, says the idea of being able to improve and train the brain as we get older is relatively new.
[02:45.66]Previous to maybe 30 years ago, neuroscientists believed that the brain was effectively fixed in its ability to process information, pay attention, plan, remember. 
[02:57.98]We now know that the brain is constantly changing the way that it operates in response to the challenges and activities that it's engaged in.
[03:05.99]The concept is called neuroplasticity, meaning the brain continues to adapt, change, and perhaps be trained even as we age. 
[03:14.40]It's the underlying foundation for the many startup companies that are developing brain fitness programs and bringing them to market. 
[03:21.59]But are the claims of these companies supported by the science?
[03:25.19]The claims being made by most of these companies that are selling products to improve your brain are exaggerated.
[03:38.60]Laura Carstensen is director of the Stanford University Center on Longevity, an expert and author on the aging brain.
[03:45.16]When marketers tell you that you can increase your I.Q. by 20 points or that you can, with 15 minutes a day of training, improve your cognitive control and executive functioning, 
[03:59.52]and that this will make you smarter in everyday life, those kinds of claims are just clearly unsupportable by scientific evidence.
[04:09.53]She says brain games have potential, but more research is needed to understand if, and how, the brain benefits from training.
[04:16.72]At the University of California, San Francisco, Adam Gazzaley is one of many neuroscientists working to answer those questions.
[04:24.78]Well, I think that, very frequently, there's a mismatch between being based on science and claims being validated by the scientific method. 
[04:34.09]And I think that's what the real goal, is that they're more than based on science; they're validated by scientific methodology.
[04:41.04]So Gazzaley and his research team set out to design a game that started with the science. 
[04:45.68]They chose a brain function known to decline with age, multitasking, and tried to find a way to slow that decline through training. 
[04:52.78]The game they came up with, called "NeuroRacer," challenges subjects to drive a virtual car down a winding road while simultaneously recognizing and responding to road signs.
[05:02.78]I'm dangerous here. This is -- I'm a menace to society here.
[05:08.67]Like commercial games, this game gets progressively harder as the player improves, creating a challenging virtual environment for the brain to adapt to.
[05:16.83]As subjects trained in "NeuroRacer," they improved dramatically at multitasking. 
[05:21.52]Study participants in their 70s and 80s who trained for one month performed better than 20-year-olds playing for the first time. 
[05:29.03]But perhaps the most interesting part of the study was that those older players improved in other areas as well, like working memory and sustained attention.
[05:38.27]That's a big deal because there's evidence that training in one task can lead to benefits throughout the brain.
[05:43.76]This is a measure of what we call functional connectivity, which is a reflection of how your brain functions as a network, 
[05:52.10]so that different parts of the brain are not acting in isolation, but acting as a network. 
[05:58.30]And that's what we see, that that improves as well.
[06:00.56]Gazzaley's study made a splash on the scientific community, making the cover of the science journal "Nature."
[06:06.96]Gazzaley is now working to build a better, more interactive version of "NeuroRacer" that the FDA could approve as a therapy for ADHD. 
[06:14.49]But that pathway could take years or decades to complete. 
[06:17.89]And, until then, Gazzaley says he can't make any strong recommendations for the use of cognitive training.
[06:23.40]We do need better, more carefully controlled studies in order to make really strong prescriptive advice.
[06:30.30]That being said, in general, I think if you find these games fun, at least there's no clear evidence that they have detrimental effects, so I usually don't disrecommend them.
[06:42.31]I think the proof will be in the pudding. 
[06:46.66]It's not going to happen to me now, when I'm in my 50s. 
[06:50.66]But if I'm still able to do stuff like this in my 80s, I will be thrilled.
[06:56.13]By then, in 30 years, who knows what science will tell us about how middle-aged people like Wolff can keep their minds sharp.
[07:03.63]But with five million Americans suffering from Alzheimer's disease today, 
[07:08.98]and with that number due to rise sharply in the coming decades, those solutions can't come soon enough.
[07:14.68]Good brain training for the day.