Deans' stroke musings: On the brain-boosting benefits of (healthy, productive) social engagement

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Sunday, September 29, 2024

On the brain-boosting benefits of (healthy, productive) social engagement

The responsibility is your doctors to get you recovered well enough to socialize like you did before stroke. YOUR DOCTOR'S RESPONSIBILITY!

On the brain-boosting benefits of (healthy, productive) social engagement

You have probably read about the many cognitive and brain benefits of social stimulation but, are all types of social engagement equal?

What matters most with social interactions – quantity or quality?

Neuroscientists have found that social engagement can benefit the brain by helping build cognitive and brain reserve and lower stress levels, especially when social interactions are healthy, cognitively complex and productive.

Not surprisingly, the effect of social engagement can be observed directly in the brain. A seminal study focused on the amygdala, a structure in the limbic system that plays a major role in our emotional responses. Researchers reasoned that the amygdala would be a likely candidate to be modified (via neuroplastic changes) by someone’s level of social engagement, measured the size of the amydgala of 60 adults, and assessed the size and complexity of their social networks (i.e., how many people they were in regular contact with and the number of different groups these contacts could be divided into). What they found is that the larger and the more complex a person’s social network actually was, the bigger their amygdala.

You may be wondering: does making more friends trigger growth in the amygdala over time, or do people with bigger amygdalas to begin with tend to make more friends?

Trying to distinguish causality vs. correlation, Oscar Ybarra and his colleagues at the University of Michigan randomly assigned participants to three groups: 1) a social group, in which the participants engaged in a discussion of a social issue for 10 minutes, 2) an intellectual activities group, in which the participants solved stimulating tasks (crossword puzzles and the like) for 10 minutes on their own, and 3) a control group, in which the participants watched a 10-minute clip of the television show Seinfeld. After they participated in the discussion, watched the clip, or solved the puzzles, the cognitive functioning of all the participants was assessed using a speed of processing task and a working memory (WM) task.

Results showed that people in the intellectual activities group did better in the WM task than people who merely watched a video. The same cognitive boost was observed in the social interaction group. And the study suggested, once more, that the average TV watcher would benefit from watching less TV and spending some of that “saved” time on cognitively stimulating activities. As Oscar Ybarra pointed out, “participating in a discussion involves using social cognitive processes, such as inferring what people are thinking, taking someone else’s perspective, memorizing and updating information, and inhibiting inappropriate emotions and behaviors” … which align very well with the need for novelty, variety, and challenge discussed in previous chapters.

From a different perspective, Laura Fratiglioni and colleagues have suggested that the relationship between social stimulation and brain health can also be explained via the stress hypotheses, which states that individuals with more social contacts have more opportunities to engage with other people and thus more opportunities to feel that they are well integrated and socially competent. This may increase their self-esteem and mood and lower their stress levels, which in turn would promote lifelong neuroplasticity and lower risks of cognitive decline. In other words, any positive, stress-reducing social relationship can be beneficial, regardless of whether or not it involves a high level of cognitive complexity.

In essence, then, scientists have found that more social engagement is often better than less, especially via interactions that involve stress-reducing support, novelty, variety, and challenge. Whatever it is we are already doing, there are always new opportunities we could explore.

Through our workplaces and careers–including those difficult transitions: Given extended longevity and rapidly evolving workplaces, our work environment/s play a very important role in our lifelong brain health, providing (or not) brain-boosting benefits through decades of work–and social interactions at work. It is also key to highlight the importance of managing stress and anxiety during career transitions, so we can frame them as opportunities to socialize and grow and not as threats. The longer we live, the more crucial this is going to be: recent studies looking at the United States and 12 other European countries have found that the earlier people retire, the more quickly their memory declines.

Through social groups and volunteering: Another way to connect with people regularly is to join groups, such as a sports or book club, a religious group, or volunteering (at a library, hospital, school, etc.), with a shared purpose. On top of the general brain benefits from social engagement each activity will come with its own specific benefits. A hiking club or a tennis club adds physical health benefits, while a book club adds intellectual stimulation. For example, when Michelle Carlson and her colleagues at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health conducted a brain imaging study to evaluate the effects of Experience Corps, a program that helps seniors partner with schools to help children improve academically and behaviorally, they found that participants showed improved executive functions compared to controls, as well as increased activity in the part of the brain that supports these functions (the prefrontal cortex).

Remember the Oh, the Places You’ll Go! book and message by Dr. Seuss?

We should add: Oh, the People You’ll Meet!

– This is an adapted excerpt from The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness: How to Optimize Brain Health and Performance at Any Age by Alvaro Fernández Ibáñez and Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg.