Study: Effortful lifelong learning–full of novelty and challenge– is key to maintain & improve cognitive function

Some 2.3 mil­lion of U.S. adults over 65 – more than 4% – have a diag­no­sis of demen­tia. But even with­out a diag­no­sis, a cer­tain amount of cog­ni­tive decline is nor­mal as age sets in.

And whether it’s due to fear of cog­ni­tive decline or notic­ing laps­es in cog­ni­tion when we are stressed, many of us have had moments when we thought we could use an extra cog­ni­tive boost.

The good news is research has shown that peo­ple can make changes through­out adult­hood that can help pre­vent or delay cog­ni­tive decline and even reduce their risk of demen­tia. These include quit­ting smok­ing and prop­er­ly man­ag­ing blood pressure.

In addi­tion to these lifestyle changes, many peo­ple are turn­ing to brain-train­ing games, which claim to opti­mize your brain’s effi­cien­cy and capac­i­ty at any age. The mak­ers of brain-train­ing apps and games claim their prod­ucts can do every­thing from staving off cog­ni­tive decline to improv­ing your IQ.

But so far these claims have been met with mixed evidence.

We are cog­ni­tive neu­ro­sci­en­tists who focus on brain health across the adult lifes­pan. We study how the brain informs cog­ni­tion and the ways we can use brain imag­ing to under­stand cog­ni­tive and brain-train­ing inter­ven­tions. We aim to under­stand how our brains change nat­u­ral­ly over time as well as what we can do about it.

Ongo­ing research shows what actu­al­ly hap­pens to the brain when it is engaged in new learn­ing, offer­ing a win­dow into how peo­ple can sus­tain their brain health and how brain-train­ing games can play a role. We believe these stud­ies offer some strate­gies to train your brain the right way.

Brain training fact vs. fiction

Brain train­ing is a set of tasks, often com­put­er­ized, based on well-known tests to mea­sure a type of cog­ni­tion, but in a gam­i­fied manner.

Most brain-train­ing games were designed to help par­tic­i­pants mas­ter one or more spe­cif­ic skills. One exam­ple is a game that shows you a let­ter and num­ber com­bi­na­tion, where some­times you must quick­ly iden­ti­fy whether the let­ter is even or odd, while oth­er times you must switch to decid­ing whether the let­ter is a con­so­nant or vow­el. The game may increase in dif­fi­cul­ty by requir­ing you to accom­plish the task with­in a set time limit.

Such games are designed to require a high lev­el of atten­tion, fast pro­cess­ing speed and a flex­i­ble mind to alter­nate between the rules, known as exec­u­tive functioning.

But it turns out that the spe­cif­ic skills learned in these games often do not trans­late to more gen­er­al, real-world appli­ca­tions. Whether brain games meet their end goal of last­ing cog­ni­tive improve­ment across a num­ber of areas is still high­ly debat­ed among psy­chol­o­gists. To make such claims requires rig­or­ous evi­dence that play­ing a spe­cif­ic game improves cog­ni­tive or brain performance.

In 2016, in fact, the Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion issued a US$50 mil­lion penal­ty to one of the most pop­u­lar brain-train­ing games at the time, Lumos­i­ty, for mis­lead­ing con­sumers into think­ing that they could achieve high­er lev­els of men­tal per­for­mance at work or at school and pre­vent or delay cog­ni­tive decline by using its product.

If improv­ing on a brain game helps the play­er get bet­ter only at that or high­ly sim­i­lar games, maybe game devel­op­ers need a dif­fer­ent approach.

Put some challenge into it

In a study dubbed the Synapse Project, in which one of us, Ian McDo­nough, helped assess the final out­comes, one group of par­tic­i­pants were tasked with engag­ing in a new activ­i­ty with which they had lit­tle expe­ri­ence. They were assigned to either dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy or quilt­ing. Though these activ­i­ties were not games, they were meant to be engag­ing, chal­leng­ing and done in a social environment.

Anoth­er group was assigned activ­i­ties that involved lit­tle active learn­ing, such as engag­ing in themed activ­i­ties relat­ed to trav­el or cook­ing, or more soli­tary activ­i­ties such as solv­ing cross­word puz­zles, lis­ten­ing to music or watch­ing clas­sic movies. These groups met for 15 hours a week over 14 weeks. All par­tic­i­pants were test­ed at the begin­ning and end of the study on var­i­ous cog­ni­tive abilities.

Those assigned to the new, chal­leng­ing activ­i­ties showed sig­nif­i­cant gains in their mem­o­ry, pro­cess­ing speed and rea­son­ing abil­i­ties rel­a­tive to those assigned to the less chal­leng­ing activ­i­ties. None of the par­tic­i­pants were direct­ly trained on these cog­ni­tive tests, which means that the chal­leng­ing activ­i­ties enhanced skills that trans­ferred to new sit­u­a­tions, such as remem­ber­ing a list of words or solv­ing abstract problems.

Brain scans of par­tic­i­pants showed that over the course of the study, those engaged in the more chal­leng­ing activ­i­ties increased their neur­al effi­cien­cy. In oth­er words, their brains didn’t have to work as hard to solve prob­lems or recall information.

The study also showed that the more time par­tic­i­pants spent on their projects, the big­ger their brain gains and the bet­ter their mem­o­ry was at the end of the 14 weeks.

One dif­fer­ence between the types of activ­i­ties engaged in the Synapse Project and tra­di­tion­al brain train­ing is whether activ­i­ties are done in a group or alone. Although oth­er stud­ies have found a ben­e­fit to social inter­ac­tion, the Synapse Project found no dif­fer­ence between the social and soli­tary activ­i­ties in the low-chal­lenge group. So, chal­lenge rather than the social com­po­nents seems to be the dri­ver of main­tain­ing cog­ni­tive and brain health.

What you can do to maintain a healthy brain

You might be think­ing it’s time to take up dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy or quilt­ing. But in the end, it’s not about those spe­cif­ic tasks. What mat­ters most is that you chal­lenge your­self, which often comes nat­u­ral­ly when doing some­thing new.

The new learn­ing that often is accom­pa­nied by a sense of effort – and some­times frus­tra­tion – requires access­ing the resources in the frontal lobe, which man­ages think­ing and judg­ment, and the pari­etal lobe, which process­es atten­tion and com­bines dif­fer­ent sen­so­ry inputs. These regions con­stant­ly talk to each oth­er to keep the mind adapt­able in all kinds of sit­u­a­tions and pre­vent the brain from going into “habit mode.”

Where does this leave us? Well, on the one hand, games tout­ed as “train­ing your brain” may not be the best solu­tion com­pared with oth­er routes to improv­ing cognition.

Iron­i­cal­ly, you might already be train­ing your brain by play­ing effort­ful games that are not mar­ket­ed as “brain train­ing.” For exam­ple, games such as Tetris or real-time strat­e­gy games such as Rise of Nations have shown improve­ments in play­ers’ cog­ni­tion. Research has even shown that play­ing Super Mario 64 can result in increas­es in brain vol­ume in regions such as the hip­pocam­pus, the mem­o­ry cen­ter of the brain.

While lit­tle evi­dence sug­gests that any brain-train­ing game or pro­gram glob­al­ly improves cog­ni­tion, some may improve spe­cif­ic aspects of it. As with oth­er activ­i­ties, chal­lenge is key.

If you’re a word per­son, try a num­bers-based game. If you love math, con­sid­er a word game or puz­zle. Choos­ing a task that makes you feel uncom­fort­able gives you the best shot at main­tain­ing and even improv­ing your cog­ni­tion. Once you start feel­ing a sense of ease and famil­iar­i­ty, that’s a sign that it’s time to switch tasks, change the game or at least add some chal­lenge by advanc­ing to a new lev­el of dif­fi­cul­ty that feels just beyond your reach.

The Study:

The Impact of Sus­tained Engage­ment on Cog­ni­tive Func­tion in Old­er Adults: The Synapse Project (Psy­cho­log­i­cal Science):

• Abstract: In the research report­ed here, we test­ed the hypoth­e­sis that sus­tained engage­ment in learn­ing new skills that acti­vat­ed work­ing mem­o­ry, episod­ic mem­o­ry, and rea­son­ing over a peri­od of 3 months would enhance cog­ni­tive func­tion in old­er adults. In three con­di­tions with high cog­ni­tive demands, par­tic­i­pants learned to quilt, learned dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy, or engaged in both activ­i­ties for an aver­age of 16.51 hr a week for 3 months. Results at posttest indi­cat­ed that episod­ic mem­o­ry was enhanced in these pro­duc­tive-engage­ment con­di­tions rel­a­tive to recep­tive-engage­ment con­di­tions, in which par­tic­i­pants either engaged in non­in­tel­lec­tu­al activ­i­ties with a social group or per­formed low-demand cog­ni­tive tasks with no social con­tact. The find­ings sug­gest that sus­tained engage­ment in cog­ni­tive­ly demand­ing, nov­el activ­i­ties enhances mem­o­ry func­tion in old­er adult­hood, but, some­what sur­pris­ing­ly, we found lim­it­ed cog­ni­tive ben­e­fits of sus­tained engage­ment in social activities.

– Ian McDo­nough is an Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chol­o­gy, and Michael Dulas an Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chol­o­gy, at the State Uni­ver­si­ty of New York at Bing­ham­ton. This arti­cle was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished on The Con­ver­sa­tion.

The Study in Context:

• How learn­ing changes your brain
• Can brain train­ing work? Yes, if it meets these 5 conditions
• What are cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties and how to boost them?