Libraries, brain training and tennis: help your brain age well

Annabel and I have always been a little wary of brain training exercises. There’s certainly plenty of them out there. They’re well researched, but the ultimate conclusion is often that they make you really good at playing that particular game with no substantial real-world benefits.

We’d usually rather read a book, play a board game or do a puzzle for a little cognitive sharpening. In my coaching practice, I encourage clients who spend a lot of time on a screen working to seek activities offline, although brain training games can be fun and/or stimulating for those who aren’t so tied to a device.

Lifelong learning

There’s so much we can be doing to stimulate our brains. While I was writing this post, a new study crossed my desk, published in the journal Neurology, linking specific types of lifelong learning to lower Alzheimer’s risk and slower cognitive decline. The researchers looked at reading, writing, learning languages and visiting museums. These are all things Annabel and I prioritise to help us age well. I’m off to the V&A Museum when I’ve finished writing this post, and Annabel was on her way home from the library when I sent the draft to her to read!

The study followed almost 10,000 older adults for a decade and found a 40% Alzheimer’s risk reduction for people in the top 10% of lifetime cognitive enrichment (the catch-all term for these sorts of activities) compared to those in the bottom 10%. Higher lifelong enrichment was associated with delays in dementia onset by up to five years, and mild cognitive impairment by up to seven years.

What I like about this study is that the research team looked at lifetime exposure to learning. The study author, Andrea Zammit, said “Our findings suggest that cognitive health in later life is strongly influenced by lifelong exposure to intellectually stimulating environments.” With the number of people living with dementia forecast to triple to more than 150 million globally by 2050, she went on to suggest that, “Public investments that expand access to enriching environments, like libraries and early education programs designed to spark a lifelong love of learning, may help reduce the incidence of dementia.”

That’s music to our Age-Well Project ears. Anything that makes learning more widely available, not just to those  who can afford books and museum entrance fees – can only be a good thing.

Brain training

Anyway, back to brain training games. A brand new report is worth taking note of. The study, from John Hopkins University in Baltimore, looked at a specific cognitive training designed to improve speed of processing. The training involves finding increasingly complex visual information on a computer screen, against the clock. In the study, participants played Double Decision, a brain training activity from Brain HQ, twice a week for 60-75 minutes for 10 weeks. They had a 25% lower risk of developing dementia across 20 years, compared to the control group.

The research team explained that speed training may have been particularly effective because the program was adaptive, meaning that it adapted its level of challenge for each participant’s individual performance. So it never got easy for them. Additionally, speed training drives implicit learning (more like an unconscious habit or a skill), which works differently in the brain to just learning facts, for example. Although over an hour, twice a week, seems quite a long time to be playing a computer game, if I’m honest.

Hand-brain coordination

There are plenty of other activities that don’t involve being tied to a screen for an extra couple of hours a week. My social media feeds seem to be full of people demonstrating finger exercises – hand-brain coordination – said to improve cognition.

All sorts of activities, including juggling, drumming, playing the piano, patting your head while drawing circles with the other hand and hand-eye coordination games all fit the bill. They challenge the brain to integrate multiple inputs at once: visual attention, motor control, timing, right/left brain coordination. These activities aren’t just physical, they map onto brain networks linked to executive function, working memory and attention. Do they reduce dementia risk? That’s not been shown, but they do help build the neuroplasticity that underlies cognitive health.

There’s especially good evidence for cognitive-motor dual-task activities. This is very different to multi-tasking! Examples would be things like balancing on one leg while reciting the alphabet backwards or coordinated hand movements while doing a mental task. They improve executive function, reduce fall risk and enhance processing speed. Tai chi and dance also fall into this bracket.

Anyone for tennis?

I do multi-tasking hand activities – I follow BrainBody by Jules on Instagram and subscribe to her membership. They’re quick, fun patterns to learn and I feel like my brain’s had a work out afterwards! And I’ve recently taken up tennis, which combines physical activity with ball skills and proprioception (the body’s ability to sense where it is in space).

If you’ve found a brain training programme you like – and it makes you feel sharper – let us know in the comments.

VALENTINE’S CHOCOLATE RECIPES

Valentine’s Day tomorrow might be a chance to share dark chocolate with someone you love. Here are a few of our favourite chocolate recipes from the archives:

Chocolate chestnut orange cake 

Chocolate peanut squares

Coffee and chocolate brainies

Chocolate pancakes

Susan