Such simple mental activity as reading books, playing chess or solving simple mathematical problems can protect a person’s brain from dementia that occurs in the elderly and middle ages, experts from the Illinois Institute of Technology in the USA are sure. Scientists reported this at the annual conference of the Radiological Society of North America, also noting that people in whose lives mental work is rare have an extremely high risk of losing their intellectual abilities in the future.
The experts' conclusion was drawn up according to the results of the study, which involved 152 people with an average age of 81 years. First of all, the scientists were convinced that the participants had no congenital abnormalities in the brain, after which they had to indicate in a special questionnaire how often they played board games in their youth, read books and devoted themselves to other similar activities, evaluating their frequency on a five-point scale. Over the next 12 months, all participants were examined in turn for mental retardation using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
Analysis of the data obtained from the survey allowed specialists to detect a significant relationship between mental activity and the level of protection of a person from dementia after middle age. In other words, those participants in the experiment who regularly engaged in various intellectual tasks throughout their life, from solving various puzzles to playing cards, had a higher brain activity coefficient, unlike those who avoided mental work. Consequently, from the time of their intelligence was lost more slowly, which means it was less vulnerable to age-related dementia.
"Active mental work is perhaps one of the best ways to avoid the memory and thinking problems that accompany an aging person," said Illinois Institute of Technology representatives.
