Brain games target dementia-fearing baby boomers

It's 1 p.m. at the Heritage Estates' Brain Gym in Livermore, Calif., and the gym rats are starting their workout.

Dorothy Emmrich, age 100, straps on a headset and glares at a computer screen showing rows of playing cards. Each makes a different sound when she clicks on it. She searches for pairs that make matching sounds, a classic memory game.

The software was created by closely held Posit Science Corp. in San Francisco. It is one of about 20 companies, including Nintendo Co., pitching brain games to the elderly and baby boomers to delay or blunt the onset of dementia. The market will surge to $2 billion by 2015 from $225 million last year, says Alvaro Fernandez, co-founder of SharpBrains, a San Francisco consulting company.

"This is a whole new subindustry — exercise equipment for your brain," says Andrew Carle, an assistant professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. "If Suzanne Somers could make millions of dollars off the ThighMaster, think what you could do with brain-trainers."

Insurance companies including Humana Inc., the second-largest seller of Medicare drug plans, are encouraging policyholders to use the games. Treating Alzheimer's and dementia patients in 2005 cost the U.S. government's Medicare and Medicaid health programs $112 billion, a total that will reach $184 billion by 2015, according to the Alzheimer's Association.

About 5.2 million people in the U.S. already have Alzheimer's — a progressive and fatal disease that destroys brain cells — and 10 million baby boomers eventually will develop it, says the association, based in Chicago. Americans older than 55 fear they will develop Alzheimer's more than any other illness, according to a 2006 MetLife Foundation survey.

Brain-training programs for the elderly "will become as common as bingo," says SharpBrains' Fernandez, 35, whose company promotes science-based cognitive training. "Over 400 senior residential facilities have brain-fitness centers today."

People who choose activities that stimulate their minds throughout their lives are less likely to develop dementia, or memory loss, says Robert Wilson, a neuropsychologist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago and an early researcher in the field.

There's little evidence that one type of cerebral exercise is better than another, he says.

"If I was going to bet on anything, I would bet on reading," says Wilson, 60. "The key is to pick something you enjoy and can sustain over a long period of time."