Could a Videogame Strengthen Your Aging Brain?

A sheen is starting to appear on Rocky Blumhagen's forehead, just below his gray hair. He's marching in place in a starkly lit room decked out with two large flatscreens. On both of the TVs, a volcano lets off steam through wide cracks glowing with lava, their roar muffling the Andean percussion and flutes on the soundtrack. Rocky reaches out his left hand, as if to grasp a coin from midair, and one of them disappears with a brrring. "I don't know if I can do it," he says to a guy named Josh sitting nearby in a felt-covered lounge chair. He looks up from his iPad, watching Rocky, age 66, grab, jog, kick, and reach his way through the videogame. "Keep it up," Josh says as the heart monitor in the corner of the screen reads 129.