Brain exercises may speed up dementia in old age

1^st September 2010 - People who try to keep hold of their faculties by taking part in mentally stimulating activities may pay a price by finding symptoms of dementia develop faster later in life, researchers say.

Dementia affects an estimated 820,000 people in the UK, a number forecast to rise as the population ages.

Cost of delaying cognitive decline

Brain training, Sudoku puzzles and listening to radio programmes are all popular techniques employed by people as they get older to try to arrest the decline in their mental abilities. However, the latest research suggests that while at first they may help keep you mentally sharper, the trade off could be more rapid decline if they develop dementia in older age.

"Our results suggest that the benefit of delaying the initial signs of cognitive decline may come at the cost of more rapid dementia progression later on, but the question is why does this happen?" says study author Professor Robert Wilson of Rush University Medical Centre in Chicago.

The study

Over almost 12 years, researchers examined the mental activities of 1,157 people aged 65 or older who did not have dementia at the start of the investigation. The participants, who were all drawn from a health and ageing study in Chicago, answered questions about how often they took part in mental activities such as listening to the radio, watching television, reading, playing games and going to a museum.

Participants were awarded up to five points depending on how many mentally stimulating activities they undertook.

The results

During the next six years, the study found that the rate of decline in thinking skills for people without cognitive impairment was reduced by 52 percent for each point on the cognitive activity scale. However, for people with Alzheimer's disease, the average rate of decline per year increased by 42 percent for each point on the cognitive activity scale.

Wilson says that mentally stimulating activities may somehow enhance the brain's ability to function relatively normally despite the build-up of lesions in the brain associated with dementia. However, he notes that mental activities compress the time period that a person spends with dementia, delaying its start and then speeding up its progress. "This reduces the overall amount of time that a person may suffer from dementia," he says in a statement.

The findings appear in the latest edition of the journal, Neurology.

‘Interesting’: Dementia charity

Dr Simon Ridley, Head of Research at the Alzheimer’s Research Trust, says in a statement: “These are interesting results, especially as the research included a wide variety of mentally stimulating activities, from listening to the radio to visiting museums. Most people can take part in some of these; and they can provide great pleasure but it’s not yet clear how such activities might affect the brain and dementia.

“During dementia, proteins build up in the brain and nerve cells become damaged. It could be that taking part in mentally stimulating activities is not able to stop the damage but helps the brain cope with the changes.

“There is increasing evidence that our lifestyle can affect dementia risk. We know that eating a healthy diet and taking regular exercise as well as keeping blood pressure and cholesterol in check may help lower dementia risk. We need to do more research to find out if taking part in mentally stimulating activities could be added to the list.”