LONDON: Busy people may have better-functioning brains in old age than those who are less busy.
A health, busy lifestyle is associated with improved cognitive function, the Dallas Lifespan Brain Study found.
A total of 330 volunteers, aged between 50 and 89, filled in questionnaires for the project. The volunteers also completed a series of neuropsychological tests.
Denise Park, director of the Dallas Lifespan Brain Study, said a link had been discovered between busy lifestyles and superior processing speed of the brain, working memory, reasoning and vocabulary. However, the results also raised further questions – such as whether being busy improves cognitive function or if people with heightened neurological characteristics simply tend to be busier people.
They hypothesised another possibility: That busier people have more opportunities to learn through the wider variety of situations they find themselves in, which results in stimulating cognition. – The Independent