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Challenging hobbies help rejuvenate the brain

28.01.2016

Elderly people are often advised to be active and find a hobby to help protect their mental faculties from fading. However, not every activity and not every hobby is suitable here. According to a study by scientists at the University of Texas at Dallas, it is better for older people to do something that requires a lot of mental effort to preserve cognitive functions.

The experiment involved several dozen volunteers from 60 to 90 years old, who for fourteen weeks, fifteen hours a week, gave either digital photography, or quilting - sewing quilted patchwork things, or traveling together or cooking together. The first two hobbies - photography and quilting - were quite difficult and required some effort to master them, traveling and cooking involved an active social life, but there was nothing much to learn there. Finally, participants from the third group of the experiment simply listened to music, watched the classics of world cinema, or had fun with some simple games. All of them before and after the 14-week period underwent special tests for the state of cognitive abilities, and their brains were scanned in magnetic resonance imaging; the same tests and tomography were repeated a year later.

As our readers might have guessed, those older people who had to engage in complex hobbies performed better: in memory tests after a period of “training”, they showed higher results, and MRI showed that their brain retains high plasticity in those areas. cortex, which is responsible for attention and semantic analysis.

For example, if a person was faced with a simple statement, the brain in the corresponding areas was activated weakly, but if the language task was difficult, then cortical activity also increased. Such an adjustment of resources to a task is a common thing in youth, but with age, the brain begins to respond to any task with the same tension (as, by the way, this happened to all volunteers before the experiment). That is, complex activities that require a person to learn something, to some extent preserve - or return - the youth of the brain. And just enjoying the beautiful or just actively communicating with others will not be enough here.

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