Study: Actual, sustained practice–not mere knowledge–is needed to harness neuroplasticity and improve cognition over time

Lifestyle improve­ments may lessen cog­ni­tive decline (Wiley):

” … 19 indi­vid­u­als old­er than 65 years of age who were expe­ri­enc­ing cog­ni­tive decline were ran­dom­ized to a con­trol group or an inter­ven­tion group for 8 weeks. The con­trol group received online infor­ma­tion relat­ed to demen­tia and lifestyle risk fac­tors, Mediter­ranean diet, phys­i­cal activ­i­ty, and cog­ni­tive engage­ment. Par­tic­i­pants were instruct­ed to imple­ment this infor­ma­tion into their own lifestyles. The inter­ven­tion group received the same online infor­ma­tion, plus active com­po­nents to assist with imple­ment­ing this infor­ma­tion into their lifestyles: dietit­ian ses­sions, an exer­cise phys­i­ol­o­gist ses­sion, and online brain training.

Over 6 months of fol­low-up, inves­ti­ga­tors not­ed that par­tic­i­pants in the inter­ven­tion group were able to improve their lifestyle and had high­er cog­ni­tion scores than those in the con­trol group. The results sug­gest that lifestyle-based changes may mod­i­fy the course of cog­ni­tive decline.

“We’ve known for some time that lifestyle changes such as these can reduce demen­tia risk in the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion. What this study adds is that with the right inter­ven­tion, peo­ple expe­ri­enc­ing cog­ni­tive decline may retain suf­fi­cient neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty for their brain to ‘bounce back’ from decline,” said lead author Mitchell McMas­ter, a PhD stu­dent at The Aus­tralian Nation­al University.

The Study:

Lifestyle Risk Fac­tors and Cog­ni­tive Out­comes from the Mul­tido­main Demen­tia Risk Reduc­tion Ran­dom­ized Con­trolled Tri­al, Body Brain Life for Cog­ni­tive Decline (BBL?CD) (Jour­nal of the Amer­i­can Geri­atrics Soci­ety). From the abstract:

• BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: To eval­u­ate the effi­ca­cy of a mul­tido­main inter­ven­tion to reduce lifestyle risk fac­tors for Alzheimer’s dis­ease (AD) and improve cog­ni­tion in indi­vid­u­als with sub­jec­tive cog­ni­tive decline (SCD) or mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment (MCI).
• INTERVENTION: The con­trol con­di­tion involved four edu­ca­tion­al mod­ules cov­er­ing demen­tia and lifestyle risk fac­tors, Mediter­ranean diet, phys­i­cal activ­i­ty, and cog­ni­tive engage­ment. Par­tic­i­pants were instruct­ed to imple­ment this infor­ma­tion into their own lifestyle. The inter­ven­tion con­di­tion includ­ed the same edu­ca­tion­al mod­ules and addi­tion­al active com­po­nents to assist with the imple­men­ta­tion of this infor­ma­tion into par­tic­i­pants’ lifestyles: dietit­ian ses­sions, an exer­cise phys­i­ol­o­gist ses­sion, and online brain training.
• RESULTS: The pri­ma­ry analy­sis showed that the inter­ven­tion group had a sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er ANU?ADRI score (?2 = 10.84; df = 3; P = .013) and a sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er cog­ni­tion score (?2 = 7.28; df = 2; P = .026) than the con­trol group.
• CONCLUSION: Results sup­port the hypoth­e­sis that improve­ments in lifestyle risk fac­tors for demen­tia can lead to improve­ments in cog­ni­tion over a short time frame with a pop­u­la­tion expe­ri­enc­ing cog­ni­tive decline. Out­comes from this tri­al sup­port the con­duct of a larg­er and longer tri­al with this par­tic­i­pant group.

The Study in Context:

• Can you grow your hip­pocam­pus? Yes. Here’s how, and why it matters
• How learn­ing changes your brain
• To har­ness neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty, start with enthusiasm
• Solv­ing the Brain Fit­ness Puz­zle Is the Key to Self-Empow­ered Aging
• What are cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties and how to boost them?
• The Ten Habits of High­ly Effec­tive Brains