FW: NYTimes.com Article: Social Whirl May Help Keep the Mind Dancing

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Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2002 08:15:06 -0500 (EST)

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Subject: NYTimes.com Article: Social Whirl May Help Keep the Mind Dancing

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Social Whirl May Help Keep the Mind Dancing

October 29, 2002

By ERIC NAGOURNEY

People hoping to stay sharp as they age often turn to

crossword puzzles, math problems and other demanding

intellectual pursuits.

But is all that really necessary?

A new set of studies suggests that it may be just part of

the solution. Simply talking to people, the researchers

say, appears to keep mental skills sharp.

The studies, by psychologists from the University of

Michigan and the University of Denver, argue that ordinary

day-to-day contact is at least as useful as more formal

intellectual activities in preserving mental acuity.

" When people interact with others, basic processes such as

working memory, speed of processing and verbal knowledge

come into play, " the authors wrote. " But social interaction

also entails responding to others with our vision, hearing,

touch and even smell. It is hard to conceive of a math

problem or a novel affecting us in all these ways. "

Still, it is not simply a matter of more social contact's

leading to a sharper mind. People in better shape mentally

are probably more inclined to be social in the first place,

the study said. Which is cause and which is effect is not

clear, and each may be a bit of both.

" I think in the end it's going to be dynamic, " said the

lead author, Dr. Ybarra of the University of

Michigan. The study, not yet published, was supported in

part by the Institute for Social Research at the University

of Michigan.

Dr. Ybarra said he and his colleagues were responding to a

widespread assumption that to keep the brain sharp people

needed to engage in intellectual activities. But with many

elderly people isolated, the researchers said, it was

important not to overlook other factors in mental decline.

The studies were based on earlier research that did not

look directly at the association between social activity

and cognitive ability, but nevertheless produced data that

shed light on the issue. Those works included a government

study from the mid-1970's that assess the well-being of

1,834 people ages 62 to 100, a study in 1986 by the

Institute for Social Research that examined the lives of

3,617 Americans ages 24 to 96 and a World Health

Organization study from 1991 that looked at aging in four

Mideastern countries.

In all the studies, researchers asked participants about

social lives and assessed mental skills with simple tests.

Dr. Ybarra and his colleagues, Drs. Eugene Burnstein of the

University of Michigan and Piotr Winkielman of the

University of Denver, took that information and correlated

it.

They found a close connection between how much social

contact people reported and how well they did when asked to

do tasks like count backward by three or recall something.

" The main findings, " the authors wrote, " can be summarized

as follows: The more people are socially engaged, the

better off they are cognitively. "

The findings are likely to be accepted intuitively by many

people who work with the elderly, but from a scientific

viewpoint, the study fails to make its case, said Dr. Jerry

, president of the American Geriatrics Society and

chief of geriatrics at the University of Pennsylvania. Much

of the problem, Dr. said, arises from the reliance

on published studies.

" The question is so important, " he said. " You can't really

answer it with archival data. "

The researchers said they hoped to conduct follow-up

studies with their own subjects.

The researchers did not dismiss the benefits of mental

exercises. They cited studies that suggested that people

who had mentally stimulating activities reduced their risk

of Alzheimer's disease.

But Dr. Winkielman noted that the activities included games

like cards and checkers. So the benefits, he argued, " may

actually be due to the exercise of the social brain. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/29/health/aging/29TALK.html?ex=1037674906 & ei=

1 & en=e463acbfd25a46aa

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