In patients suffering from dementia, even if they can physically see their destination, they sometimes can’t figure out how to get there, because they’ve forgotten how to find the path they were accustomed to take. It’s like taking the same well-worn path through a forest, and one day not being able to find the entrance to that path. If that neural connection is lost, so is access to the piece of information it pointed to. When the aging process causes our brain cells to begin to die off, our memory of nouns (like the names of people we know and love) often go first, because there is only one neural pathway connected to that bit of stored information. Joseph Coyle, a commentator on the study, “The cerebral cortex and hippocampus, which are critical to these activities, are remarkably plastic, and they rewire themselves based upon their use.” Verghese and his fellow researchers is that social dance is an activity that activates and takes advantage of our brains’ neuroplasticity. Why would dancing have such a profound effect on aging brains? ![]() But an even bigger surprise was that regularly engaging in social dancing lowered the seniors’ risk of dementia by a staggering 76%. ![]() To the researchers’ surprise, forms of exercise such as playing golf, bicycling, and swimming produced a 0% lower risk of Alzheimer’s – no effect at all. They also included physical activities such as swimming, bicycling, playing tennis or golf, walking for exercise, doing housework, and dancing.īased on previous research, they expected doing crossword puzzles to score highly, and they did, producing a 47% lower risk of dementia. These activities included reading books, doing crossword puzzles, playing cards, writing for pleasure, and playing a musical instrument. The scientists, working under the assumption that the old saying “Use it or lose it” is extremely accurate when it comes to brain function, studied a number of activities that subjects engaged in to see which ones best improved their cognitive functions. ![]() Joe Verghese at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, followed elderly subjects over an impressive 21-year period to determine which activities most improved their sharpness of mind, and thus staved off the debilitating effects of Alzheimer’s disease. That seems to be the gist of a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
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