If you need inspiration to get your mind in gear, the results of research done at the University of California Berkeley should do it for you. The study, published in "Archives of Neurology" on January 23rd, compared 65 adults who had a mean age of 76.1 with 10 Alzheimer's patients who had a mean age of 74.8. The controls were 11 young people with a mean age of 24.5. The "cognitively active" subjects who engaged in regular reading, brain games, and other mental challenges turned out to have low levels of beta-amyloid, the plaques that are suspected to be the cause of Alzheimer's disease. In fact the researchers reported that the images of the brain fitness bunch looked as though they were a quarter of their age.
On the other hand, the brain images of the folks who were cognitively intact but reported not doing much to stimulate their minds had amyloid levels as high as those of the Alzheimer's patients.
The scientists aver that mental exercise may boost neural processing and thus slow the deposition of the amyloid plaques. They caution, though, that Alzheimer's is a complex disease and that mental activity is only one of the factors involved. Yet this report, which was supported by the Institutes of Health and the Alzheimer's Association, ought to encourage all of us to keep our minds as active as possible.
