How many decades have to pass before your hospital buys Sudoku puzzles for every stroke survivor? Or will they wait forever because
SOMEONE ELSE WILL SOLVE THE PROBLEM?
And tell them what to do? That would be such a fucking display of incompetence that the whole stroke hospital and the board of directors needs to be removed.
Numbers and Words: Saving Your Aging Brain
New research suggests you need to “use it or lose it.” Can puzzles help?
Google Platinum Blonde is you want the hardest sudoku puzzle created.
Posted May 25, 2019
Puzzles may do more than entertain us.
Source: Ben_Kerckx/Pixabay, used with permission.
Using data collected online from more than 19,000 study participants ages 50 to 93, researchers at University of Exeter Medical School in the U.K. found that those who regularly played number games like Sudoko had significantly higher cognition function than those who played fewer or none at all. The brain functioning skills tested included reasoning, attention/focus, information processing, executive function, working memory, and episodic memory.
The study, published in print in the May 2019 issue of the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, piggybacks on research published last year by the same researchers on the cognitive benefits of doing word puzzles, such as crosswords. In both cases, the researchers found that the more often participants worked on the puzzles, the better they did on tests that assessed their attention, reasoning, and memory capabilities. In the case of number puzzles, the researchers found that those participants who reportedly did number puzzles more than once a day scored highest on all cognitive functions tested than any other group. Overall, speed and accuracy were most notably improved.
A 2016 article published in Nature reviewed various theories and studies of brain training and came up with conflicting results and mixed reviews. While many studies seem to show real benefits from training, skeptics say there may be nothing more to it than there is to practicing anything to get better at it. They question whether or not specific types of brain training used in these types of studies actually improve cognition in other areas and under other circumstances. They also question whether or not the range of activities used to test cognition is broad enough to accurately measure the outcome and its significance.
Research like these recently published word and number puzzle studies heed the call from skeptics for larger and stronger studies on the effects of brain training. Many questions remain on the relationship between working memory and intelligence, for instance, and on the long-term and overall benefits of braining training. Researchers around the world are teaming up to engage in more rigorous studies wherein new ideas and methods for brain training will be explored and shared.
Meanwhile, most studies end with rationales for further research and the Exeter studies are no exception. While this latest study looked at how often participants played number puzzles, just as the previous study looked at the frequency of engaging in word puzzles, the researchers are planning future studies to help them determine if and how the specific type and difficulty of puzzles influences brain function in aging adults.
References
Brooker
H, Wesnes KA, Ballard C, et al. The relationship between the frequency
of number-puzzle use and baseline cognitive function in a large online
sample of adults aged 50 and over. Geriatric Psychiatry. First published
online February 11, 2019.
Brooker
H, Wesnes KA, Ballard C, et al. An online investigation of the
relationship between the frequency of word puzzle use and cognitive
function in a large online sample of older adults. Geriatric Psychiatry.
First published online February 15, 2018.
Makin S. Brain training: Memory games. Nature. March 3, 2016. S10-S11
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