Mentally Challenging Activities Key to a Healthy Aging Mind Individuals Who Participated in High Challenge Activities like Quilting and Photography Showed Enhanced Brain Activity, According to a New Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience Report

January 15, 2016

One of the greatest challenges associated with the growing numbers of aged adults is how to maintain a healthy aging mind. Taking up a new mental challenge such as digital photography or quilting may help maintain cognitive vitality, say researchers reporting in Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience.

Recent evidence suggests that engaging in enjoyable and enriching lifestyle activities may be associated with maintaining cognitive vitality. However, the underlying mechanism accounting for cognitive enhancement effects have been poorly understood.

Investigators at the University of Texas at Dallas proposed that only tasks that involved sustained mental effort and challenge would facilitate cognitive function. Senior author Denise Park and lead author Ian McDonough compared changes in 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. All of the participants underwent a battery of cognitive tests and brain scans using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), an MRI technology that measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow.

Participants were randomly assigned to the high-challenge, low-challenge, or placebo groups. 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 14-week period and a subset was retested a year later.

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. These are brain areas associated with attention and semantic processing. Some of this enhanced brain activity was maintained a year later. This increased neural efficiency in judging words was demonstrated by participants showing lowered brain activity when word judgments were easy and increasing activity when they became hard. This is a pattern of response typical of young adults. Before participating in the high-challenge intervention, the older adults were processing every item, both easy and hard, with maximum brain activity. After participation, they were able to modulate their brain activity to the demands of the task, thus showing a more efficient use of neural resources. This change in modulation was not observed in the low-challenge group.

The findings show that mentally demanding activities may be neuroprotective and an important element for maintaining a healthy brain into late adulthood.

“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. However, we would like to conduct much larger studies to determine the universality of this effect and understand who will benefit the most from such an intervention,” explained senior author Denise C. Park, PhD, of the Center for Vital Longevity, School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas.

Ian McDonough, who is now an assistant professor of Psychology at the University of Alabama and was first author on the study, said: “The study clearly illustrates that the enhanced neural efficiency was a direct consequence of participation in a demanding learning environment. The findings superficially confirm the familiar adage regarding cognitive aging of ‘Use it or lose it.’”

Denise Park added, “Although there is much more to be learned, we are cautiously optimistic that age-related cognitive declines can be slowed or even partially restored if individuals are exposed to sustained, mentally challenging experiences.”

# # #

NOTES FOR EDITORS

“The Synapse Project: Engagement in Mentally Challenging Activities Enhances Neural Efficiency,” by Ian M. McDonough, Sara Haber, Gérard N. Bischof, and Denise C. Park. Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience, Volume 33, Issue 6 (2015), DOI: 10.3233/RNN-150533, published by IOS Press.

This article is openly available at http://content.iospress.com/articles/restorative-neurology-and-neuroscience/rnn150533. For additional information contact Daphne Watrin, IOS Press at +31 20 688 3355 or d.watrin@iospress.nl. Journalists wishing to interview the authors should contact Alex Lyda, Communications Manager, The University of Texas at Dallas, at 972-883-3783 or alyda@utdallas.edu.

ABOUT RESTORATIVE NEUROLOGY AND NEUROSCIENCE (RNN)

An interdisciplinary journal under the editorial leadership of Bernhard Sabel, PhD, Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience publishes papers relating the plasticity and response of the nervous system to accidental or experimental injuries and their interventions, transplantation, neurodegenerative disorders and experimental strategies to improve regeneration or functional recovery and rehabilitation. Experimental and clinical research papers adopting fresh conceptual approaches are encouraged. The overriding criteria for publication are novelty, significant experimental or clinical relevance and interest to a multidisciplinary audience.

RNN Editorial Office

Prof. Dr. Bernhard Sabel

Institut für Medizinische Psychologie

Medizinische Fakultät

Otto-v.-Guericke Universität Magdeburg

39120 Magdeburg/Germany

Tel: +49-391-672-1800

Fax: +49-391-672-1803

Email: rnn@med.ovgu.de

ABOUT IOS PRESS

Commencing its publishing activities in 1987, IOS Press serves the information needs of scientific and medical communities worldwide. IOS Press now (co-)publishes over 100 international journals and about 75 book titles each year on subjects ranging from computer sciences and mathematics to medicine and the natural sciences.

IOS Press continues its rapid growth, embracing new technologies for the timely dissemination of information. All journals are available electronically and an e-book platform was launched in 2005.

Headquartered in Amsterdam with satellite offices in the USA, Germany, India and China, IOS Press has established several strategic co-publishing initiatives. Notable acquisitions included Delft University Press in 2005 and Millpress Science Publishers in 2008.