Blank Slate introduces Braintrust: The AI memory companion for people with memory loss

A woman using the Blank Slate app. Photo credit: Vadym Pastukh (Jan, 2022)

Blank Slate exists to minimize risk:

The risk of forgetting how to properly screen for dangerous people in airports.
The risk of forgetting the correct dosage of a medication to give to a soldier in anaphylactic shock.
The risk of forgetting the precise conditions in which law enforcement should never use a taser.

And now, the risk of losing one’s most important memories in older age.

Unfortunately, over 55 million people worldwide have a heightened risk of age-related memory decline. Alzheimer’s disease, the most notorious of offenders, remains incurable. But with supportive technologies like Blank Slate, the absence of a cure does not have to mean the absence of hope.

Last month, Blank Slate launched braintrust, specially designed to support people with memory loss and their caregivers. The braintrust app prompts users and their loved ones to catalog personal memories and essential information, ensuring they are never forgotten. Using the same AI-driven review schedule as Blank Slate, braintrust prompts users to review their memories regularly, providing a robust defense against forgetting.

And also like Blank Slate, braintrust is an app that is backed by rigorous, peer-reviewed scientific research, published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research: Formative Research. The full article is available to read online for free, but we’ll give you the condensed version here.

Blank Slate’s dedication to supporting memory for people with Alzheimer’s disease dates back to 2021. After our first research study found that Blank Slate was immensely helpful for enhancing memory for healthy adults, we sought to extend these benefits to people with memory impairment. We partnered with research scientists and neurologists at Boston University and Veterans Affairs to empirically test this question.

Our experiment included a statistically-powered sample of 21 college students, 20 adults over 60 without memory impairment, and 20 adults over 60 diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) due to Alzheimer’s disease. For four weeks, participants used the Blank Slate app for 2–4 minutes daily, studying new facts about the country Georgia and the names associated with famous celebrity faces that they once knew but had forgotten. This approach helped participants learn new information and retain fading memories.

After the four-week period, participants took a memory test covering the facts and celebrities they had studied, as well as some they had only reviewed once on the first day of the experiment. A week later, they retook the test without using the app in the interim.

The timeline and procedures for the five-week experiment. Jodie Foster photo credit: Edge Magazine

With this experiment, the researchers wanted to answer two questions:

Can using Blank Slate improve memory retention for people with MCI due to Alzheimer’s disease?
Is Blank Slate feasible for people with MCI due to Alzheimer’s disease to use in their everyday lives?

The answer to both questions was a resounding yes. Here’s why.

After using Blank Slate for four weeks, people with MCI due to Alzheimer’s disease showed large improvements in memory retention for both new facts about the country Georgia and the names of famous celebrity faces.

Memory performance for people with MCI due to Alzheimer’s disease after using the Blank Slate app for one month.

The best part? As you’ll see below, these memories did not fade much when people with MCI due to Alzheimer’s disease stopped using the app for more than seven days.

Memory performance for people with MCI due to Alzheimer’s disease was still strong after taking a one-week break from using the app.

Regarding the feasibility of the app, 16 of the 20 participants who had MCI due to Alzheimer’s disease were able to use the app on their own during the four-week study with no support from the research staff. Only four participants required occasional check-ins.

In a single sentence: These findings demonstrate that Blank Slate’s technology can help people live well with MCI due to Alzheimer’s disease by both learning new things and enhancing their recall of older memories, all for just a few minutes of daily use. That’s why we’re excited to bring you braintrust, the AI memory companion, now available to download in the Apple App Store.

We hope braintrust can provide meaningful memory support, fostering confidence and independence for those who use it. As we roll out this new product, we’d love to hear from users about how we can make it even better. Please send us your feedback within the app or at https://www.trybraintrust.com/contact.

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Amy Smith, PhD

Chief Scientific Officer, Blank Slate Technologies