Dr Alan Gow - Brain Training on Trial

Skeptics on the Fringe Presents:

Dr Alan Gow - Brain Training on Trial

Many people spend their hard-earned cash on games promising to protect their thinking skills as they get older. Maybe you've tried those but are still forgetting what you went into that room for! Then let’s put brain training on trial. Be our prosecution, defence and jury as we examine the claims that brain training games protect your brain. Hear the evidence for and against their claims. As you question the evidence, what will your verdict be: brain training, proven or not?

Alan's research focuses on the identification of lifestyle and behavioural factors that predict healthy ageing, primarily cognitive ageing. That is, the factors that might protect or harm the ageing brain. Alan is mainly interested in factors which are malleable, such as activity participation and exercise, social networks and support, and occupational characteristics and exposures. By being amenable to change, such factors are potential targets for interventions designed to reduce or delay the deleterious effect of ageing on cognitive abilities, and so have applied value in an increasingly aged society.

Much of Alan’s research has been conducted on large, longitudinal studies of ageing, though he has developed a translational strand to his research at Heriot-Watt within The Ageing Lab (www.healthyageing.hw.ac.uk). Based on his work identifying lifestyle factors that appear to protect cognitive abilities, he initiated his first intervention project, A Tablet for Healthy Ageing. Alan's latest research project was initiated in July 2016. The Intervention Factory is a three-year study testing a range of activities within existing community-based programmes as potential interventions to reduce cognitive ageing in old age.

https://healthyageing.hw.ac.uk/

Twitter - @AlanJohnGow @TheAgeingLab

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