John Hamilton

The researchers used a special kind of PET scan that measured acetylcholine levels both before and after the training.

It's a PET scan where they put a special substance in your 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.

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 levels.

Sorry, Gina.

But Etienne says in people who did the cognitive training, there was an increase.

In other words, Gina, brain training turned back the clock by about a decade.

That sounds good, doesn't it?

But I wanted to check on all this with an expert on acetylcholine.

So I sent a study to a guy named Mike Hasselmo 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.

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.

Well, you might, but it's really not clear.

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.