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Mental Declines Can Be Reversed, Report Shows    2005-09-16

As we get beyond retirement age, most of us will not be as mentally sharp as we once were. But a researcher at the University of Alberta says most people have the ability to reverse the mental declines that come with aging.

 "Can we reverse mental declines? Well, for most of us, the answer is yes, and I think that is definitely exciting and encouraging news," said Dr. Dennis Foth, a professor in the University of Alberta Faculty of Extension and the academic director of the U of A's Certificate in Adult and Continuing Education.

Foth and his research colleague, Dr. Gordon Thompson of the University of Saskatchewan, also found in their literature review that mental declines related to aging are not universal (they affect some more than others), and they are not pervasive (the declines normally affect different parts of our cognitive capacities to varying degrees).

Foth said mental declines are pathological for about 10 per cent of the general population over the age of 65, and not much can be done at this time to overcome the debilitating cognitive effects of diseases that affect the brain, such as Alzheimer's disease. But for the other 90 per cent of the population, cognitive decline need not be inevitable.

"A lifetime of good mental habits pays off," Foth said. "People who are curious at a young age are more likely to be mentally active and stay active as they age. And we found it is never too late to start. With a little effort, even people in their 70s and 80s can see dramatic improvements in their cognitive skills."

There are many different types of classes and mental exercises that people can do to keep their minds vibrant, Foth said, but the trick to getting more people to maintain or even improve their cognitive abilities is "ecological validity".

Ecologically valid activities are those that people do on regular basis as part of their daily lives, said Foth, whose paper with Thompson is published this month in Educational Gerontology.

Examples of "ecologically valid" activities that can improve mental capacity include reading, traveling, memorizing poetry, playing card games, doing crossword puzzles, learning how to play a musical instrument, taking continuing education courses and surfing the Web.

Foth and his colleagues are beginning to study these activities to determine which ones improve which cognitive skills. He believes this research can lead to the development of learning programs and activities that can isolate mental declines and reverse them. He added that attitude can play an important role in maintaining cognitive skills throughout life.

"People often describe their memory skills as being far worse than they actually are, and this type of attitude can start a vicious cycle," Foth said. "These people won't enroll in a class that might be beneficial to them because they believe they wouldn't be good at it. We have to protect against that."

Memory Starts To Decline In Our Mid-20s  2001-08-14

In studies of more than 350 men and women between the ages of 20 and 90, to be presented Aug. 24 in San Francisco at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Park found that mental aging is a slippery slope, with continuous declines in processing power starting as soon as our 20s.

This gradual reduction in cognitive capital is not really noticeable until the loss is substantial enough to affect everyday activities. "Younger adults in their 20s and 30s notice no losses at all, even though they are declining at the same rate as people in their 60s and 70s, because they have more capital than they need," says Park, who appears in "The Secret Life of the Brain," a new PBS series funded by the National Science Foundation.

By the time people are in their mid-60s, Park says, the continuous decreases in cognitive abilities may become noticeable. Just when most people are becoming more frequent consumers of medical services, they begin to notice that they are having more trouble remembering and learning new information.

Older people are also much more susceptible to memory distortions such as the "illusion of truth" and the "paradox of repeated denial." Older men and women are more likely to recall false information as being true, Park explains, and the more warnings they hear about a bogus medical claim---that shark cartilage cures arthritis, for example---the more likely they are to believe that the claim is true. The bogus information feels familiar if it has been heard often, and thus it seems true. Younger adults can remember that the information is familiar, but they also remember hearing that it is false.

But there is good news, too. An increase in experience and general knowledge, as measured by vocabulary, compensate for many of the losses, Park has found, with the crossroads coming around the age of 50---traditionally considered the beginning of wisdom.

With a grant from the National Institute on Aging, Park is now using neuroimaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study what goes on in the brains of younger and older minds at work. By linking behavioral testing and neuroscience, she is studying what parts of the brain older adults use for different types of mental tasks compared to younger adults, and what patterns of brain activation high-performing older adults show compared to their lower-performing peers.

"Cognitive performance is a direct result of brain activity and brain structure," she says, "much like cardiovascular fitness relates to our ability to exercise and perform physical tasks. Only 40 years ago, we had little understanding of how smoking and cholesterol levels were related to cardiovascular health," Park says. "It's likely that just as diet and exercise help to keep our bodies fit and healthy, we'll find ways to improve the functioning of our aging minds."