1,000-Subject Trial Maps Brain Aging in the Real World

Summary: The Technology for Aging Health – Digital Approaches (TAH-DA) study tracks the real-world, real-time metrics of adults spanning five decades of life. By equipping participants across North America with commercial wearable technology and tablets, the cross-sector initiative aims to build advanced, deployable algorithms capable of intercepting cognitive decline through continuous, passive biometric monitoring.

Key Facts

The Continuous Biometric Shield: Participants are equipped with a Samsung Galaxy Watch to passively record 24/7 health metrics for a full year. The device tracks heart rate, electrocardiogram (ECG) data, blood pressure, blood oxygen levels, body composition (BIA), skin temperature, and detailed sleep architecture.
The High-Sensitivity Digital Biomarker: Mobile wearables capture minute, subconscious changes in everyday routine habits (e.g., subtle shifts in sleep patterns, step counts, or heart-rate variability). Neuroscape and Samsung aim to convert these highly sensitive behavioral changes into predictive digital biomarkers for early dementia.
Active Tablet Interventions: Alongside passive tracking, participants utilize a Samsung Galaxy Tab A9 to engage in evidence-based, cognitively challenging digital interventions. These proprietary neuro-games were custom-developed by Neuroscape to target and boost cognitive control pathways that typically erode with age.
Rigorous Triple-Point Testing: To map long-term neuroplastic changes, participants complete a suite of custom-built digital cognitive assessments at three critical milestones: before the study begins, immediately following the intervention phase, and during a nine-month post-trial follow-up.
Real-World Cognitive Mapping: Dr. Joaquin A. Anguera highlights that this approach moves neuroscience out of the highly controlled lab setting and into the chaotic, messy context of everyday life, generating a highly accurate perspective on human aging.
Raising the Bar for Remote Medicine: Dr. Theodore Zanto and Dr. Adam Gazzaley emphasize that TAH-DA is the most technologically ambitious remote clinical trial ever attempted, setting a new operational standard for how global digital health ecosystems can deploy non-invasive treatments at a massive scale.

Source: UCSF

An innovative new study from the Neuroscape research center at UCSF, and consumer electronics giant Samsung seeks to understand decade-by-decade changes in brain health.

The Neuroscape Technology for Aging Health – Digital Approaches (TAH-DA) longitudinal study, seeks to identify biometric predictors of cognitive decline over the course of a year, using Samsung wearable technology.

Samsung fosters innovation and transformational health research in collaboration with leading institutions to explore new health technologies and a novel prescriptive on wellness. The TAH-DA study is another example of Samsung’s work to understand the unique connection between the brain and wellness.

The study is part of Samsung’s Open Innovation Initiative, a strategic program designed to accelerate innovation by collaborating with leading universities, hospitals, research institutions, and startups, to support the development of next-generation digital health solutions to enhance healthcare, deepen our understanding of the mind-body connection, maximize the wellness potential of personal devices, and support the development of cutting-edge technologies.

The TAH-DA study began recruiting participants from across North America in early 2026, with a goal of enrolling 200 adults from each decade of life between the ages of 40 and 89. After enrolling in the study, participants receive Samsung’s Galaxy Watch to record for one year a suite of health metrics throughout the day and at night while they sleep, as well as a Galaxy Tab A9 that participants will use to self-assess and train their cognitive control abilities.

The Galaxy Watch measures a comprehensive set of health metrics, including heart rate, ECG (electrocardiogram), blood pressure, blood oxygen levels, and body composition (BIA). It also offers sleep and skin temperature tracking, as well as daily activity tracking, such as step counts.

This data will be used to develop unique insights and deployable algorithms to track and predict changes in brain health over time. Additionally, participants will engage in a series of surveys, digital cognitive assessments, and Neuroscape-developed digital interventions on a Samsung tablet.

“With this rich dataset, we will be able to determine which passive, biometric measures are associated with cognitive assessments, as well as test the effects of our evidence-based, digital interventions in boosting cognitive function in adults across their lifespans,” says Joaquin A. Anguera of Neuroscape. “Unlike traditional neuroscience studies, which often use highly controlled, simplified stimuli and static laboratory environments, modern approaches look to study human cognition in real-world contexts and in real-time.”

Mobile phones and wearables have become essential in daily life, capturing detailed information about users’ habits and behaviors. Device data captures subtle routine changes with remarkable high sensitivity. Recognizing this potential, researchers at Samsung and UCSF hope to develop digital biomarker technology designed to support tracking changes in cognitive function through this partnership.

“We are thrilled to partner with Samsung on this research project, which combines its wearable technology and tablets with our software to study cognition in the real world,” says Adam Gazzaley, executive director of Neuroscape. “This academic-industry partnership is driving the most technologically ambitious remote trial we’ve ever attempted and will generate a unique perspective on human aging.”

How the study will work

The remote study will use the Neuroscape-developed clinical trials platform, Nexus, which enables online deployment of all study-related activities, including enrollment, consent, diagnostic assessments, and digital interventions. The project will also include partnerships with Helpsquad (providing participants access to both an AI chatbot and a virtual assistant) and didit.me to assist with identification verification during the enrollment process.

Interested participants sign up on the study website: neuroscape.ucsf.edu/tahda-study.
Once enrolled, researchers will randomly assign participants to either an intervention group or a control group and will send each participant a Galaxy Watch and a Galaxy A9 Tab.
Once received, tablet-based assessments and the intervention phase will begin. During this phase, participants will be required to engage in cognitively challenging games designed and developed at Neuroscape, which have already shown positive influences on cognitive abilities that diminish with age.
Participants will also complete a set of custom-built digital cognitive assessments at three time points: before the study, after completion of the intervention, and 9 months later.

“We are happy to have Neuroscape’s digital interventions combined with our technology to enhance the digital health ecosystem and create new approaches to well-being,” says Praveen Raja, Vice President of Digital Health Samsung Research America. “Using biometric data from our Galaxy Watch, we are excited to support the identification of behavioral and physiological predictors of cognitive decline, while looking toward digital interventions for improving cognition.”

“With this new study, we hope to raise the bar for remote trials,” says Theodore Zanto of Neuroscape. “Building off our past work, we continue to push the bounds of neurotechnology, looking to create neuroscience-based predictors of cognition across the adult lifespan, as well as new digital treatments.”

To learn more about the TAHDA study, go to: neuroscape.ucsf.edu/tahda-study.

Key Questions Answered:

Q: What is a “digital biomarker,” and how can a smart watch predict cognitive decline?

A: A digital biomarker is a collection of everyday physiological and behavioral data points collected passively by consumer devices that can signal a medical change. Dr. Joaquin A. Anguera explains that early cognitive decline doesn’t just show up on specialized brain scans; it manifests as microscopic, real-world changes in daily habits. Subtle disruptions in your sleep architecture, minor shifts in your walking pace, or tiny irregularities in your resting heart rate can be captured by a smartwatch. By feeding this continuous data into advanced algorithms, researchers hope to predict memory and cognitive changes years before a clinic test would spot them.

Q: Why does this study intentionally recruit an equal number of people from every single decade between 40 and 89?

A: Traditional aging studies often look at extreme contrasts, comparing young college students to elderly adults over 80, which completely misses the gradual transition of how the mind changes. The TAH-DA study is built around a “lifespan architecture,” recruiting exactly 200 people from every decade of middle and late adulthood. This allows neuroscientists to track the exact decade-by-decade changes in brain health, identifying when specific biometric warning signs start to show up and determining which age groups benefit the most from digital game-based interventions.

Q: Are these tablet-based cognitive games just ordinary brain teasers or video games?

A: No, these are clinically engineered, evidence-based digital treatments designed by the neuroscientists at UCSF Neuroscape. Unlike generic commercial brain games, these proprietary titles are mathematically structured to isolate and target the specific neural networks responsible for executive function, working memory, and cognitive control, the precise mental faculties that naturally diminish as the brain ages. Dr. Theodore Zanto notes that past iterations of these games have already shown a unique ability to trigger positive neuroplastic changes, and this trial will test their therapeutic power at a massive, population-wide scale.