Puzzles, games, a good book – any activity that stimulates the brain has been found in a recent study supported by the National Institute on Aging to delay the start of dementia related memory loss in older people. So, how are puzzles and brain health linked?
The information comes from the Bronx Aging Study that includes data on nearly 500 subjects between 75 and 85 years old who didn’t have dementia at the beginning of the research.
The work appears in the August 4, 2009 issue of Neurology and has found cognitive leisure activities seem to hold off the memory decline in those who end up being diagnosed with dementia.
Some of the factors thought to be involved include what’s called cognitive reserve, which may be affected by education early in life as well as taking part in activities that stimulate the brain.
It’s this “cognitive reserve” that’s thought to help hold off the decline in memory associated with dementia during the preclinical stages, the time before you see the symptoms.
The subjects, all part of the Bronx Aging Study, completed assessments every 12 to 18 months that told researchers if they took part in mentally stimulating out of work activities like reading, crossword puzzles, playing music, writing, playing cards or a board game or participating in a group discussion.
The subjects also indicated how often they participated in these things, daily, a few days a week or weekly. Point totals were assigned to the frequencies and tabulated by the research team.
The data on 101 of the subjects who developed dementia over the five-year follow up was evaluated carefully. The median (middle) total points for this group being 7, which worked out to taking part, on average, in 1 of the six activities each day.
In all, 10 participants reported no activities, another 11 reported only 1 activity per week.
The researchers looked especially closely at the point when memory loss accelerated for each participant.
The more mentally active subjects took longer for memory decline to become a problem. They saw that each additional activity day was linked to a delay in the onset of decline by 0.18 years for these subjects.
“The point of accelerated decline was delayed by 1.29 years for the person who participated in 11 activities per week compared to the person who participated in only four activities per week,” explains study author Charles B. Hall, PhD, of Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
The team also so that later-in-life mental stimulation seems to influence your overall cognitive reserve independent of education. Anyone can get the benefit of mentally challenging activities.
The average age of the world’s population is increasing at a rate we’ve never seen before. Worldwide the number of people over 65 is estimated to be 506 million in 2008; an astonishing 1.3 billion by 2040, which is 14% of the total population of the world.
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Stimulating The Mind Delays Memory Decline Continued…
The issues and challenges of aging are going to be hard to ignore in the years to come, which is why learning about dementia and how to overcome it is so important.
“Our findings show that late-life cognitive activities influence cognitive reserve independent of education,” Hall noted. “These activities might help maintain brain vitality. Further studies are needed to determine if increasing participation in these activities could prevent or delay dementia.”
So, this study gives us more evidence to show that brain exercises, games and puzzles and brain health are linked.
