Forgetfulness wasn’t supposed to fade so quickly, not at 73. Yet in Switzerland, a group of older adults with mild cognitive impairment, the earliest warning sign of dementia, found their memory sharpened after weeks of simply stepping right or left on a floor mat. The twist: they were playing a game.
Researchers at ETH Zurich tested “exergames,” fitness games combining physical movement with memory tasks, as a form of brain training. Participants trained at home for about 25 minutes, five times a week, over three months. The results, published in Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy, were striking: not only did memory scores improve, but MRI scans showed the hippocampus and thalamus—brain regions usually shrinking with dementia—actually grew in volume.
“Not only did game-based training improve the cognitive performance of study participants, but we also measured significant changes in their brains,” explained Patrick Manser, who led the research before moving to the Karolinska Institute.
This wasn’t just about solving puzzles on a screen. Each game paired cognitive challenges with deliberate foot movements. A shopping list task, for instance, required stepping right if an item appeared on the list, or left if it did not. The workouts ended with slow, controlled breathing exercises, stimulating the vagus nerve to further enhance brain regulation. The package was called “Brain-IT.”
The payoff reached beyond lab scores. Participants said they felt fitter, sharper, and more confident when chatting with friends or managing daily stress. Meanwhile, those in the control group—who received usual care without exergames—followed the typical downward slope of worsening memory.
“We hope that, with targeted exergame training, we’ll be able to slow down and reduce dementia symptoms,” said Eling D. de Bruin, the ETH professor who co-authored the study.
What makes this story resonate is how quickly the brain responded. Just 12 weeks of training was enough to detect measurable structural changes. Normally, the hippocampus shrinks early in Alzheimer’s, a hallmark doctors use to track disease progression. That the opposite trend appeared here is a vivid sign of neuroplasticity: even aging brains retain the capacity to remodel themselves.
And yet, the economic undertones shouldn’t be missed. New Alzheimer’s drugs attract headlines, but they’re expensive, limited in effectiveness, and not yet approved everywhere. Exergames, by contrast, run on a modest floor mat and screen, with no pharmaceutical side effects and potentially broad reach into homes and care centers.
Of course, caution is warranted. The trial was exploratory, with just 41 participants and a short duration. Demonstrating whether Brain-IT can delay dementia progression will require longer studies and larger numbers. Still, as one researcher put it, the sight of hippocampal growth on a scan after weeks of playful stepping is “impressive proof” that the brain’s resilience can be tapped, even when memory falters.
Journal: Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy. DOI: 10.1186/s13195-025-01835-2
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