Older adults at risk of dementia who received hands-on coaching improved their memory and thinking substantially more than those given general health recommendations, according to a two-year randomized trial published in The Lancet and presented at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in London.
The difference was 55 percent on a composite measure of global cognition. That figure is drawing attention because it isolates something researchers have suspected but rarely tested directly: the value of structure and supervision, separate from the value of the healthy behaviors themselves.
