Study indicates mentally demanding tasks can protect brain power

Mentally demanding activities may be neuroprotective and an important element for maintaining a healthy brain into late adulthood, according to findings published in Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience.

Investigators at the University of Texas at Dallas tested whether sustained mental effort and challenge would facilitate cognitive function. They compared brain activity in 39 older adults that resulted from the performance of high-challenge activities that required new learning and sustained mental effort compared to low-challenge activities that did not require active learning.

Participants underwent a battery of cognitive tests and brain scans using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

Senior author Denise Park, PhD, and lead author Ian McDonough, PhD, and colleagues randomly assigned participants to high-challenge, low-challenge or placebo groups over a 14-week period. The high-challenge group spent at least 15 hours per week for 14 weeks learning progressively more difficult skills in digital photography, quilting or a combination of both. The low-challenge group met for 15 hours per week to socialize and engage in activities related to subjects such as travel and cooking with no active learning component. The placebo group engaged in low-demand cognitive tasks such as listening to music, playing simple games or watching classic movies. All participants were tested before and after the study period and a subset was retested a year later.

Those in the high-challenge group demonstrated better memory performance after the intervention, and an increased ability to modulate brain activity more efficiently to challenging judgments of word meaning in the medial frontal, lateral temporal, and parietal cortex regions of the brain—areas associated with attention and semantic processing. Some of this enhanced brain activity was maintained a year later. They also were able to modulate their brain activity to the demands of the task, showing a more efficient use of neural resources. This change in modulation was not observed in the low-challenge group.

“The present findings provide some of the first experimental evidence that mentally-challenging leisure activities can actually change brain function and that it is possible that such interventions can restore levels of brain activity to a more youth-like state,” explained senior author Denise C. Park, PhD, of the Center for Vital Longevity, School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas.

She called for larger studies to determine the universality of this effect and understand who will benefit the most from such an intervention. McDonough said the results confirm the old saying ‘Use it or lose it.’

Beth Walsh,

Editor

Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.

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