Study concludes puzzles, games don’t boost brain

#Middlebury #Seniors

After being told for years that doing daily crossword puzzles or other types of brain stretchers would help maintain our cognitive abilities, researchers now say it isn’t so.

Specifically, researchers at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland wanted to look at whether “intellectual engagement” can help to offset age-related cognitive decline.

Their conclusion was that late-life ability was based on early life ability and engagement along the way. In other words, the more intellectual ability we start with, the more likely we are to engage in mental activities throughout our lives, so we have a higher “starting point.” However, intellectual engagement doesn’t help maintain cognitive ability later in life, it just lets mental decline start later.

Assuming they’re wrong in their conclusions (after all, there were only some 500 study participants), there are any number of ways to maintain our cognitive abilities. Here are two ideas:

• Take a daily newspaper. While the cost of a paper has gone up over the years, you can often get an electronic version for only one-third the price. With a tablet or iPad, you can sign on every day, and best of all, with a swipe of the fingers you can increase the size of the text.
• Consider buying one of those page-per-day calendars that can sit right on the kitchen table. Over breakfast you peel off the new date and have a fresh puzzle to work on while you eat. Check Amazon for a wide variety of puzzle types and put “puzzle calendar 2019” in the search box. Click on each one for a sample. Choose from brain games, crossword, Sudoku, Wheel of Fortune and more. If you have a bookstore near you, it will likely have these too.

I think we can prove those researchers wrong.

(c) 2019 King Features Synd., Inc.