Life Sciences & Medicine Active Updated Sep 7, 2026
Can exercise and brain training lower dementia risk?
Lifestyle trials against dementia
Where it stands as of Sep 7, 2026
LatAm-FINGERS, a two-year trial of at-risk older adults across 11 Latin American countries, published its full results in The Lancet: structured coaching in exercise and diet, adapted locally in each country rather than simply translated, improved cognition 55% more than general health advice alone. Lead author Lucia Crivelli said the program was built to be practical, affordable and feasible as a public health strategy. It is not yet known whether the gains hold once the coaching stops or translate into fewer deme
Large randomized trials are testing whether lifestyle interventions, exercise, brain training, social engagement, can lower the risk factors behind dementia, including the first such trial adapted for Latin America. The stakes are whether these gains hold up over years and translate into fewer actual dementia diagnoses, and whether the approach works outside the wealthy countries where most of this research has happened.
The story so far
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Sep 7, 2026 Latest
The LatAm-FINGERS trial, published in The Lancet, found that older adults across 11 Latin American countries who received structured coaching improved cognition 55% more than a control group given only general health advice, with country working groups swapping in local forms of exercise like salsa and tango and local foods like avocado, quinoa and chia for the MIND diet.
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Aug 5, 2026
George Mason University researcher Emily Ihara led a 12-week trial of StrongerMemory, a daily routine of 10 minutes each of reading aloud, handwriting and simple math, in 102 adults over 59 recruited from aging-in-place communities who had noticed their own memory slipping, and found measurable improvements in cognitive test scores after 12 weeks.
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Aug 3, 2026
Osaka Metropolitan University researchers followed 2,578 older adults in Habikino City, Japan for four years and found that showing up weekly to informal, resident-led community gathering groups cut the risk of developing cognitive disability by roughly 50 percent among adults who did not already exercise regularly, with no added measurable benefit for those already active.
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Aug 2, 2026
Researchers reported at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in London that LatAm-FINGERS, a trial of 1,200 adults aged 60 to 77 testing a culturally adapted lifestyle intervention pairing exercise with brain training against a control group given only general health advice, produced statistically better thinking skills in the intervention group, building on the Lancet Commission's 2024 estimate that 14 modifiable factors account for 45% of dementia cases worldwide.
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