Keeping the aging brain active may also keep it sharp: study

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Keeping the aging brain active may also keep it sharp: study

In the study of people in their seventies and eighties without dementia, those with more years of education, mentally stimulating jobs and greater amounts of cognitive activity in middle and later life started experiencing memory and thinking problems up to nine years later than those with the least enriched lives. “We knew that lifetime intellectual enrichment can delay the onset of cognitive decline, but here we were able to estimate how much it helps you,” said lead author Prashanthi Vemuri, a radiologist at the Mayo Clinic and Foundation in Rochester, Minnesota. Factors earlier in life, including education and employment, and mental stimulation later in life were both very important, she told Reuters Health. Although education and employment seemed to be more important overall, mid- and later-life cognitive activity accounted for at least a few of the extra sharp-witted years.

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