Studies show that this habit helps the brain to function properly.
It is worth paying attention to a new groundbreaking study conducted in Switzerland and published in the scientific journal Neuroimage. Researchers at the University of Zurich have gathered convincing evidence that the decisions you make today affect your knowledge and how your brain ages in decades.
So how do you best protect your mind from age reduction?
Never stop learning
Research has shown that lifelong learning promotes strong brain function and cognition in old age. This may seem simple, but the main findings of this study can be summarized as follows: if you do not use your intelligence, you may lose it.
Researchers studied the brain functions of hundreds of old people and found that those with academic experience had far fewer signs of degeneration in seven years. These results suggest that learning has a positive effect on the aging process in the brain and promotes a younger and sharper mind, regardless of the actual age of the person.
Research
The research team studied more than 200 elderly people for seven years. All participants in the experiment did not have signs of dementia, showed above-average intelligence and led a very active social life.
For seven years, people’s brains were regularly evaluated, both neuroanatomically and neuropsychologically, by MRI. These brain scans allowed the scientists to study both the gaps and the hyperintensity of white matter of the brain in digital images. These neural “degenerative processes” appear on MRI as “black holes” or “white spots”.
In other words, the more black holes and white spots were seen on MRI, the greater the deterioration of the brain was.
Researchers aren’t quite sure why these degenerative processes lead to black-and-white abnormalities on brain scans, but they suppose that this phenomenon is probably caused by a lack of blood flow, loss of neurons / nerve pathways or dead brain tissue. As you can imagine, these observed black holes and white spots can cause serious damage to human cognition and thinking, especially if these defects are located in particularly important neural areas.
When researchers evaluated participants’ MRIs during the follow-up period, it became apparent that those with academic experience showed “significantly fewer typical signs of brain degeneration.”
Learning creates “brain reserves”
The research has clearly shown that a person’s cognitive abilities at any age are largely determined by the strength and integrity of the connected neural networks in their mind. The authors of the study suggest that learning helps strengthen these existing neural networks and build new connections.
So when you spend 2022 learning a new language or mastering drawing, you’re likely to create a stronger neural network that you can return to when old age inevitably affects your brain.
“We suspect that a high level of education leads to an increase in neural and cognitive networks throughout people’s lives and that they accumulate reserves. In old age, their brains compensate better for any disorders, ” – said the head of the study and neuropsychologist Lutz Janke.
