John Hamilton

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,

OK.

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.

Actually, Gina, they were taking part in another one of your favorite activities.

I'll let Etienne explain.

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.