Chess Training for the Elderly: Insights and Prospects as a Dementia Preventive Treatment
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http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2075-040X
Abstract
This article reviews research on chess training as a treatment to promote cognitive fitness and to delay the onset of dementia among the elderly. Alternative treatments are needed to address the widespread problem of dementia among the elderly, primarily because all drug treatments developed thus far to cure or delay dementia have been deemed either unsuccessful or unsafe. Chess training augmented by artificial intelligence is presented as an alternative treatment to address the dementia crisis. Computer-based technology and open-source chess software such as Stockfish 14 with the artificial intelligence component NNUE have the capacity to enhance chess training programs for the elderly. Although research on chess training for the elderly is sparse when compared to research on drug treatments for dementia, one pilot study, as an example, provided evidence that chess training is a viable intervention to improve cognitive fitness among the elderly. The elderly participants in the study enjoyed the chess lessons and looked forward to the challenge and the camaraderie in the group games against artificial opponents available on websites such as chess.com. Chess instruction is a safe, practical, and efficient intervention that should be implemented in community senior centers and retirement villages. Also, chess instruction in community senior centers and retirement villages provides a potentially highly generative and interesting setting for the scientific study of chess and its utility in addressing the enormous public health problem of Alzheimer’s Disease and other forms of dementia. Chess training should be seriously considered as an intervention to be used in research in the quest to promote brain health among the elderly and to protect the elderly from the ravages of Alzheimer’s Disease and other forms of dementia.
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