Thinking Yourself Silly

Mental activities like puzzles can speed up dementia later.

New research shows that mentally stimulating activities such as solving crossword puzzles, reading and listening to the radio may, at first, slow the decline of thinking skills, but speed up dementia later in old age. Researchers evaluated the mental activities of 1,157 people aged 65 or older who did not have dementia at the start of the nearly 12-year study. They answered questions about how often they participated in such activities as listening to the radio, watching TV, reading, playing games and going to a museum. On this five-point cognitive activity scale, the more points scored, the more actively they were seen to stimulate their minds.

Over the next six years, the study, published in Neurology, saw the rate of cognitive decline in people without cognitive impairment fall by 52 per cent for each point on the cognitive activity scale. For people with Alzheimer’s disease, though, the average rate of decline per year increased by 42 per cent. “Our results suggest 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?” says researcher Dr Robert S Wilson of Rush University Medical Center, Chicago.