Brain Games Keeping Our Minds Sharp As We Age

Tens of thousands of senior citizens in Israel and the US are playing online brainteasers developed by an Israeli startup to help improve their memories and stave off the cognitive decline that can come as we – and our brains – get older. 

Tel Aviv-based Effectivate offers 25 different games for what it calls brain training sessions, all put together by experts in brain training development and specialists in clinical neuropsychology. 

“The idea was to create a product that can help seniors maintain the cognitive abilities that decline with age, which may lead to dementia and Alzheimer’s,” Effectivate CEO and co-founder Shai Granot tells NoCamels. 

Using proprietary artificial intelligence, the platform creates personalized training programs for each individual player. 

This AI gathers data about the players from their gaming sessions – what they found challenging and what they found easy – in order to choose the specific games and level of difficulty for the next time they play.

The games are created with input from Effectivate’s advisory team of neuropsychologists and brain researchers. The team includes Dr. Mor Nahum, an expert in brain training development and research and head of the Computerized Neuroscience Laboratory at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Dr. Gil Suzin, who specializes in cognitive and memory rehabilitation and is head of neurocognitive operations at Aviv Clinics.

Granot says that unlike “one-size fits all” approach of brain-training programs such as Lumosity and BrainHQ, all of Effectivate’s content and design is created with older people in mind.  

One game, for instance, instructs the player to indicate every time balls moving around a closed loop reach a specific location, with the balls gradually becoming faster and faster.

The company says that this exercise strengthens decision-making abilities, skills that are known to weaken with the onset of cognitive decline. 

Another timed game asks the player to pick out from a list of shapes the ones that they had previously clicked on. This is intended to help seniors keep their focus on important information as they perform tasks in real life.

Effectivate says its claims that the games prevent cognitive decline in the elderly are supported by academic research conducted by the Communication Aging and Neuropsychology Lab (CANlab) at Reichman University in Herzliya. 

The CANlab study split 40 adults aged between 60 and 75 years into two groups of 20. The members of one group were instructed to play Effectivate games at least three times a week for five weeks while the members of the other group did not play any brain-training games. 

After six weeks, the study found that participants who played Effectivate games were able to process more information at a faster pace in a noisy environment as compared to those who played no games.

The CANlab researchers tested this by recording eye movements as the participants from both groups played a simple computer game.

The game used auditory cues to instruct the players to point at a specific object on the screen and ignore three other objects that had similar sounding names while background noise became increasingly louder.  

The Effectivate players reacted more quickly and had fewer mistakes, the study found, suggesting that they were able to use the skills they sharpened during the cognitive training games in other, unrelated activities – a phenomenon known as “far transfer.”  

Brain Boosting 

Granot began to develop Effectivate’s platform after his father was diagnosed with dementia in 2015.

“It was a surprise, because we didn’t see the signs – even though there were a lot of signs,” he recalls. “Eventually, it led to Alzheimer’s disease.”

He sought a way to prevent the cognitive decline and subsequent development of dementia in other aging individuals, And when he could not find an adequate solution, he set about creating his own.

After every session, a user also receives virtual currency that they can use for a reduction on their next monthly or annual Effectivate subscription, to unlock audiobooks or courses on strengthening the brain or to receive discounts on wellness services. 

Two years ago, the company signed an agreement with Clalit, Israel’s leading health maintenance organization, which now also offers the service to its clients. The HMO website touts Effectivate as an advanced system that helps you get the most out of your brain. 

Effectivate was also a finalist in this year’s MassChallenge Israel accelerator program, a four-month intensive course that helps entrepreneurs advance their nascent companies. 

Since publicly launching the platform in 2021, Effectivate’s games have been played more than 15 million times. 

Just like any other online game, Effectivate faces the challenge of maintaining user retention. To combat this and to keep players engaged, the platform offers new games the more you play – some are unlocked after one training session, while others may require dozens of sessions. 

“Whenever we develop a new game, we think about what we want to achieve, which cognitive abilities we want to work on, and most importantly, how to make the experience fun and interesting for our players,” says Granot.

“You train your brain through our games, but you’re not only getting better in the games, you’re getting better with performing daily tasks.”

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