NOTE: Although this article was written discusing the role of mental stimulation and exercise in relationship to Alzheimer's disease it appears the benefit would apply to all persons likely to develop movement neurological diseases including PSP.
People who regularly read books, do crossword puzzles or otherwise exercise their brains are significantly less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease, says a study out Wednesday involving 801 elderly Catholic priests, nuns and brothers. In the ongoing Religious Orders Study, led by researchers at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago, participants ages 65 and older, from 40 religious orders and societies, were tested to determine how often they took part in various brain-stimulating activities: watching TV; listening to radio; reading newspapers, magazines or books; playing games such as cards or checkers, or doing puzzles; and going to museums.
They were followed an average of 4 years, taking a battery of annual tests to evaluate their memory, language and other indications of brain function.
Researcher Robert Wilson and colleagues report in today's Journal of the American Medical Association that, on average, those who said they frequently take part in the mentally stimulating activities were 47% less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease than those who rarely engage in the activities.
Study director David Bennett says researchers also found that the rate of decline of brain function was faster among those who rarely took part in activities that involve thinking. "It appears that keeping your mind active can in fact slow the rate at which you lose mental ability," he says.
Whether brain stimulation prevents disease or only reflects its absence has yet to be proved, says Elisabeth Koss, assistant director of the Alzheimer's Disease Centers Program at the National Institute on Aging, which funded the study.
It's possible that people in the earliest stages of Alzheimer's disease may be less likely to take part in brain-exercising activities because they're already slightly impaired, she says. Or, it may be that stimulating the brain allows it to compensate for damage caused by disease or normal aging.
"The old idea that you're born with a certain number of brain cells and you lose them, like hair, turns out not to be the case," Koss says. There is evidence that mental calisthenics help create healthy nerve paths in the brain, which could replace those lost or impaired by disease, she says.
May 21 2002 -- An active and challenging life may protect your brain from Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases.
American and German scientists say they found that older mice who lived in an enriched setting where they were physically and mentally challenged grew and kept a higher number of new brain nerve cells linked to memory function.
That was true even if this kind of lifestyle began when the mice were in middle age, says the study published in tomorrow's issue of the journal Annals of Neurology.
Two groups of mice were housed in different ways. One group was in a small, bare cage shared with a few other mice. The other group of mice lived in a large cage with many other mice and had access to plastic tunnels, a running wheel and other objects.
The mice lived this way between the ages of 10 and 20 months, which is middle-to-old age for mice. At the end of the 10-month experiment, the old mice in the enriched setting were generating five times as many new hippocampal nerve cells (brain cells associated with cognitive skill and memory) as their counterparts in the bare cage.
While the scientists are cautious about applying these findings to humans, they do note that previous studies show people who are physically and mentally active in middle age and old age are less susceptible to neurodegenerative diseases.
The association between longevity and exercise is well-established.
