Zurich – Physical, social and cognitive leisure activities promote healthy brain aging. As researchers at the University of Zurich have discovered, this slows down the regression of a certain region in the brain that is responsible for learning and memory.
The area of the brain that is already impaired in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease can be protected through physical, social and cognitive activities. A team of researchers from the University Research Priority Program The dynamics of healthy ageing and the Healthy Longevity Center of the University of Zurich (UZH) has shown in a long-term study "that people who were more physically and socially active at the beginning of the study showed a smaller decrease in the thickness of the entorhinal cortex over a period of seven years," neuropsychologist Lutz Jäncke explains in a Communication of the UZH. The professor emeritus at UZH initiated this study twelve years ago and continues to lead it together with Susan Mérillat.
The aim of the current study was to investigate the relationships between the thickness of the entorhinal cortex, memory performance and leisure activities in cognitively healthy adults over the age of 65 in a longitudinal study over a period of seven years. The researchers also found that the thickness of the entorhinal cortex is closely linked to memory performance: The less this brain structure lost thickness over the duration of the study, the less memory performance was reduced.
"Physical exercise and active leisure activities with friends and family are therefore important for brain health and can prevent neurodegeneration in later life," says Jäncke. According to first author Isabel Hotz, the findings support "the idea of a cognitive reserve, according to which the brain can be trained like a muscle throughout life to counteract age-related decline". ce/mm