Cognitive performance tips -
Learn a new skill or hobby. Work or volunteer. These types of mentally stimulating activities have not been proven to prevent serious cognitive impairment or Alzheimer's disease , but they can be fun!
Some scientists have argued that such activities may protect the brain by establishing "cognitive reserve. Some types of cognitive training conducted in a research setting also seem to have benefits. For the Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly ACTIVE trial , healthy adults 65 and older participated in 10 sessions of memory training, reasoning training, or processing-speed training.
The sessions improved participants' mental skills in the area in which they were trained with evidence suggesting these benefits persisted for two years. Be wary of claims that playing certain computer and online games can improve your memory and other types of thinking as evidence to back up such claims is evolving.
There is currently not enough evidence available to suggest that computer-based brain training applications offered commercially have the same impact on cognitive abilities as the ACTIVE study training. NIA and other organizations are supporting research to determine whether different types of cognitive training have lasting effects.
For more information, see Participating in Activities You Enjoy. Connecting with other people through social activities and community programs can keep your brain active and help you feel less isolated and more engaged with the world around you. Participating in social activities may lower the risk for some health problems and improve well-being.
People who engage in personally meaningful and productive activities with others tend to live longer, boost their mood, and have a sense of purpose. Studies show that these activities seem to help maintain their well-being and may improve their cognitive function.
So, visit with family and friends. Consider volunteering for a local organization or join a group focused on a hobby you enjoy. Join a walking group with other older adults. Check out programs available through your Area Agency on Aging , senior center, or other community organizations. Increasingly, there are groups that meet online too, providing a way to connect from home with others who share your interests or to get support.
We don't know for sure yet if any of these actions can prevent or delay Alzheimer's and age-related cognitive decline. Still, some of these have been associated with reduced risk of cognitive impairment and dementia. Stress is a natural part of life.
Short-term stress can even focus our thoughts and motivate us to take action. To help manage stress and build the ability to bounce back from stressful situations, there are many things you can do:. Genetic , environmental , and lifestyle factors are all thought to influence cognitive health.
Some of these factors may contribute to a decline in thinking skills and the ability to perform everyday tasks such as driving, paying bills, taking medicine, and cooking. Genetic factors are passed down inherited from a parent to child and cannot be controlled.
But many environmental and lifestyle factors can be changed or managed to reduce your risk. These factors include:. Many health conditions affect the brain and pose risks to cognitive function.
These conditions include:. It's important to prevent or seek treatment for these health problems. They affect your brain as well as your body and receiving treatment for other conditions may help prevent or delay cognitive decline or thinking problems.
Older adults are at higher risk of falls, car accidents, and other accidents that can cause brain injury. Alcohol and certain medicines can affect a person's ability to drive safely and also increase the risk for accidents and brain injury.
Learn about risks for falls and participate in fall prevention programs. Wear helmets and seat belts to help prevent head injuries as well.
Overcoming this fear can help you stay active, maintain your physical health, and prevent future falls. Some drugs and combinations of medicines can affect a person's thinking and the way the brain works.
For example, certain ones can cause confusion, memory loss, hallucinations, and delusions in older adults. Medicines can also interact with food, dietary supplements, alcohol, and other substances. Some of these interactions can affect how your brain functions.
Drugs that can harm older adults' cognition include:. Lack of exercise and other physical activity may increase your risk of diabetes, heart disease, depression, and stroke — all of which can harm the brain.
In some studies, physical activity has been linked to improved cognitive performance and reduced risk for Alzheimer's disease. In general, staying active is known to lower the risk of high blood pressure, stroke, and symptoms of depression, all of which in turn can improve cognitive health.
A number of studies link eating certain foods with keeping the brain healthy and suggest that other foods can increase health risk. For example, high-fat and high-sodium foods can lead to health problems, such as heart disease and diabetes, that can harm the brain. Smoking is harmful to your body and your brain.
It raises the risk of heart attack, stroke, and lung disease. Quitting smoking at any age can improve your health. Drinking too much alcohol affects the brain by slowing or impairing communication among brain cells. This can lead to slurred speech, fuzzy memory, drowsiness, and dizziness.
Long-term effects may include changes in balance, memory, emotions, coordination, and body temperature. Staying away from alcohol can reverse some of these changes. As people age, they may become more sensitive to alcohol's effects.
The same amount of alcohol can have a greater effect on an older person than on someone who is younger. Also, some medicines can be dangerous when mixed with alcohol. Ask your doctor or pharmacist for more information.
At any age, getting a good night's sleep supports brain health. These digital programs can't really exercise the cerebellum Latin: "Little Brain" and, therefore, literally only train half your brain.
These "brain-training workouts" are the equivalent of only ever doing upper-body workouts, without ever working out your lower body. Although the cerebellum constitutes only 10 percent of the brain by volume, it houses over 50 percent of the brain's total neurons.
Neuroscientists are perplexed by this disproportionate ratio of neurons. Whatever the cerebellum is doing to optimize brain function and improve cognition , it recruits a lot of neurons to do it. I slightly disagree. I believe these programs do have a risk because they add more sedentary screen time to a person's day.
This additional time spent on a mobile device or computer takes away from time that people could spend breaking a sweat, exploring the world, interacting with friends and family, making art, playing a musical instrument, writing, reading a novel, daydreaming, practicing mindfulness meditation , etc.
I did a meta-analysis of recent neuroscience studies to compile a list of habits that can improve cognitive function for people in every generation. These habits can improve cognitive function and protect against cognitive decline for a lifespan. Last December, researchers at Boston University School of Medicine discovered more evidence that physical activity is beneficial for brain health and cognition.
The study found that certain hormones , which are increased during exercise, may help improve memory. The researchers were able to correlate blood hormone levels from aerobic fitness and identify positive effects on memory function linked to exercise.
In , researchers at Dana-Farber and Harvard Medical School released a study showing a specific molecule released during endurance exercise that improves cognition and protects the brain against degeneration. See " Scientists Discover Why Exercise Makes You Smarter.
In their breakthrough discovery, scientists honed in on a specific molecule called irisin that is produced in the brain during endurance exercise through a chain reaction.
Irisin is believed to have neuroprotective effects. Researchers were also able to artificially increase the levels of irisin in the blood which activated genes involved in learning and memory.
A study of children in Finland investigated the link between cardiovascular fitness, motor skills, and academic test scores. The researchers found that first-graders with poor motor skills also had poorer reading and arithmetic test scores. Across the board, children with better performance in fitness and motor skills had higher cognitive function and scored better on reading and arithmetic tests.
A study , "The Impact of Sustained Engagement on Cognitive Function in Older Adults: The Synapse Project," found that learning new and demanding skills while maintaining an engaged social network is key to staying sharp as we age.
The findings reveal that less-demanding activities, such as listening to classical music or simply completing word puzzles, probably don't provide noticeable benefits to an aging mind and brain. Older adults have long been encouraged to stay active and to flex their memory and learning like any muscle that you have to "use or lose.
When you are inside your comfort zone you may be outside of the enhancement zone. Another study, from , found that a training program designed to boost cognition in older adults also increased their openness to new experiences, demonstrating for the first time that a non-drug intervention in older adults can change a personality trait once thought to be fixed throughout a person's lifespan.
A study from Michigan State found that childhood participation in arts and crafts leads to innovation , patents, and increases the odds of starting a business as an adult. The researchers found that people who own businesses or patents received up to eight times more exposure to the arts as children than the general public.
And that was something we were surprised to discover. Last year, neuroscientists discovered multiple ways that musical training improves the function and connectivity of different brain regions and improves cognitive function. Practicing a musical instrument increases brain volume and strengthens communication between brain areas.
Playing an instrument changes how the brain interprets and integrates a wide range of sensory information, especially for those who start before age seven. The findings were presented at the Neuroscience conference in San Diego. In a press briefing, Gottfried Schlaug of Harvard Medical School summarized the new research from three different presentations at the conference.
He said, "These insights suggest potential new roles for musical training including fostering plasticity in the brain; have strong implications for using musical training as a tool in education ; and for treating a range of learning disabilities.
Another study found that reading books, writing, and participating in brain-stimulating activities at any age may preserve memory. Neuroscientists discovered that reading a novel can improve brain function on a variety of levels.
This study of the brain benefits of reading fiction was conducted at Emory University and published in the journal Brain Connectivity. The researchers found that becoming engrossed in a novel enhances connectivity in the brain and improves brain function.
In , John Cacioppo of the University of Chicago presented findings that identified that the health consequences of feeling lonely can trigger psychological and cognitive decline.
Cacioppo's research found that feeling isolated from others can disrupt sleep, elevate blood pressure, increase morning rises in the stress hormone cortisol, alter gene expression in immune cells, increase depression , and lower overall subjective well-being. All of these factors conspire to disrupt optimal brain function and connectivity, and reduce cognitive function.
A pilot study by researchers at Harvard's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center identifed that the brain changes associated with meditation and subsequent stress reduction may play an important role in slowing the progression of age-related cognitive disorders like Alzheimer's disease and other dementias.
First author Rebecca Erwin Wells explained, "We were particularly interested in looking at the default mode network DMN —the brain system that is engaged when people remember past events or envision the future, for example—and the hippocampus—the part of the brain responsible for emotions, learning and memory—because the hippocampus is known to atrophy as people progress toward mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease.
We also know that as people age, there's a high correlation between perceived stress and Alzheimer's disease, so we wanted to know if stress reduction through meditation might improve cognitive reserve.
Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco UCSF have created a specialized video game that may help older people boost mental skills like handling multiple tasks at once. Adam Gazzaley of UCSF and colleagues published their findings in Nature in If someone received additional "booster" sessions over the next three years, the improvements were even more dramatic.
Scientists have known for decades that the brain requires sleep to consolidate learning and memory. At the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego in , sleep researchers from Brown University presented groundbreaking new research that helps explain the specifics of how the sleeping brain masters a new task.
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