William Atkins
Wednesday, 15 October 2008 03:38
Science -
Health
Page 1 of 3
A University of California (LA) study shows that middle- to older-aged adults who already know how to surf the Web, are getting much more exercise in their brains than their counterparts with no Internet experience. That’s good news for keeping down dementia especially as we grow older!
Past medical studies have shown that the more a person exercises his or her brain, say with crossword puzzles, memory games, and other such mental exercises, the more unlikely one will develop memory problems that could eventually lead to dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and other diseased related to cognitive problems.
Therefore, the Albert B. Parvin Foundation funded a University of California at Los Angles (UCLA) study to see if searching the Internet or reading a book is any different with respect to challenging the different portions of the brain.
The study involved twenty-four adults from the ages of 55 to 78 years.
None of the participates had memory problems such as dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, and all of the subjects were basically similar with regards to intelligence, age, and educational background.
However, half of them used the Web at least once each day. The other half had never used the Internet or only used it once a month.
The UCLA researchers measured brain activity within these participants using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans as they either: (1) searched the Web for something new or (2) reading text from a computer screen as shown in a format that was similar to a book.
The fMRI scans are able to measure blood flow changes in response to changes in cell responses in the brain as people perform various tasks.
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