July 24, 2008
That Bridge Game Might Be Better for You Than You Imagined
Some years ago my grandfather told a joke at our extended family’s Thanksgiving dinner table. He was 102 at the time. It was not a particularly good joke (so you won’t have to read it here) but it was a very quick-witted, subtle response to another joke, which an octogenarian had just finished telling (which was good but slightly off color, so you won’t get to read it here). What caught our attention was that not only had we thought that Granddaddy could not hear very well, we also thought he had slowed down mentally a bit. Clearly neither was true. After a life as a schoolteacher his interest in reading history never waned, nor did his love of a card game called Cowboy Pitch, which requires card-counting and significant strategizing. If any of us went to his house for a visit, we could count on playing several games of Pitch.
Recent studies suggest that the human brain continues to produce healthy brain cells and the connections between them well into advanced age. Over the last 20 years, studies by Dr. Nikolaos Scarmeas and Yaakov Stern of the Cognitive Neuroscience Division at Columbia University Medical Center have explored different brain pathologies, particularly Alzheimer’s disease. In her ‘Personal Health’ column in the New York Times, Jane Brody reports that Scarmeas and Stern’s studies reveal “up to two-thirds of people with autopsy findings of Alzheimer’s disease were cognitively intact when they died.” In other words, the scientists now know that individuals respond differently to brain pathology (such as Alzheimer's disease) depending on inherent or acquired abilities, such as IQ, education, and intellectual-social-physical life activities, a set of factors that Scarmeas and Stern call cognitive reserve.
The lifestyle factors associated with an increased cognitive reserve are still somewhat elusive. Although a stronger cognitive reserve is associated with a higher education, what may be important about these individuals are their habits rather than the actual fact of the higher degrees attained. They tend to take up brain-stimulating hobbies, such as bridge, crosswords, learning new languages. One vital component of these hobbies is that they present new challenges: it is not as helpful for brain health to repeat tasks that have already been mastered. The point of taking up and practicing these hobbies is to learn new things.
Another lifestyle factor that seems to determine an increased cognitive reserve is a rich web of social connections. Again, in her column Brody looks at an earlier study by Scarmeas that showed that individuals with lives rich in socially- or intellectually-based leisure pursuits had an almost 40% lower risk of developing dementia. And the equation seems to be quite simple: the more activities, the lower the risk. Brody writes, “Especially helpful are productive or mentally stimulating activities pursued with other people, like community gardening, taking classes, volunteering or participating in a play-reading group.”
Perhaps the best news in all this is that new habits can bring better brain health – at any time in one’s life. The near ubiquitous societal impression of inevitable and progressive mental decline with aging needs to be rethought. And undoubtedly we shouldn’t have been so surprised at my grandfather’s joke at Thanksgiving. He was still playing cards and telling bad jokes for some years to come.
Denise Barnes, The Freshwater Group
Read More:
NY Times: Mental Reserves Keep Brains Agile (Jane Brody)
Carved in Sand: When Attention Fails and Memory Fades in Midlife (Cathryn Jakobson Ramin)
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