Use it or lose it

Posted by Ricki Sharpe on September 17, 2007  
Filed Under Cognitive, Talent Management

In the wake of a talent shortage crisis, the need for older people to remain in the work force is obvious. However, survey after survey show that employers are reluctant to embrace the advantage of older workers. One often cited concern is the fitness of older workers to maintain high levels of motivation and application. With age comes physical deterioration with an associated cost to employers.

Psychologists have known for a long time that performance on cognitive tests declines with age making many older workers more suited to doing what they know best, and less suited to new conceptual and creative tasks. However, many older workers whose job requires them to keep up to date and engage in tasks that continuously stretch their minds seem to avoid this decline in cognitive function.

Importantly, social and physical activities are not enough to ward of the deterioration that occurs in aging. Recent research at the Byrd Institute shows cognitive activity as you age is the best way to protect against memory loss. This research shows for the first time that, of all lifelong activities, only a high level of mental or cognitive activity protects against the devastating memory loss of Alzheimer’s disease. High levels of social or physical activity are not enough.

Byrd Institute researchers raised Alzheimer’s mice from young adulthood through old age in one of four housing environments — high social activity, high physical activity, high cognitive activity, or a single-housing control environment. When the researchers tested the mice in a battery of memory tasks in old age, only the mice given a lifelong high level of cognitive activity were protected against memory impairment. In fact, these high cognitive activity mice performed as well as normal mice that do not develop Alzheimer’s disease. In sharp contrast, the Alzheimer’s mice raised in one of the other three environments performed poorly in multiple memory tasks.

Not only was memory protected in Alzheimer’s mice by a high level of cognitive activity, but brain levels of the abnormal protein beta-amyloid were substantially reduced. This protein, thought to be key for Alzheimer’s development, remained at soaring levels in the brains of Alzheimer’s mice raised in social or physical activity environments. Moreover, the researchers found that only the Alzheimer’s mice raised with high cognitive activity had an increase in connections between brain cells. Alzheimer’s mice raised in one of the other three housing environments had much fewer connections between their brain cel

“Our results call into question the earlier human studies suggesting social or physical activity provides protection against Alzheimer’s,” said Dr. Gary Arendash, the lead researcher on the study.

“Alzheimer’s begins in the brain several decades before any symptoms show up,” said Dr. Arendash. “That means adults in their forties and fifties need to make lifestyle choices now to decrease their risk of getting Alzheimer’s disease later.”

For those in need of some brain food, try:

Reference:

Jennifer R. Cracchiolo, Takashi Mori, Stanley J. Nazian, Jun Tan, Huntington Potter and Gary W. Arendash. (2007). Enhanced cognitive activity—over and above social or physical activity—is required to protect Alzheimer’s mice against cognitive impairment, reduce Aβ deposition, and increase synaptic immunoreactivity. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 88, 277-294.


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