JABAR EKSPRES – Dementia is not a real disease. This condition is a set of symptoms that affect the brain’s cognitive function in remembering, thinking, behaving, and speaking.
But you don’t need to worry, as reported by the Study Find page on Saturday (8/26/2023), a new study has found that older adults who take learning classes can reduce their risk of dementia.
Scientists at Tohoku University’s Institute of Development, Aging, and Cancer (IDAC) say that choosing to take a new skill, language, or hobby class in middle age can help protect the brain.
“Here we show that people who take any learning class have a lower risk of developing dementia five years later,” said study author Dr. Hikaru Takeuchi.
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“Adult education is also associated with better preservation of nonverbal reasoning with age,” he continued.
Working with study co-author and professor Dr Ryuta Kawashima, Dr Takeuchi analyzed data originally collected by the UK Biobank. An ongoing research project that has collected genetic, health and medical information from around half a million UK volunteers.
They analyzed a total of 282,421 Biobank participants for this study specifically. They initially enrolled between 2006 and 2010 and were aged 40 to 69 years at the time of enrollment. The researchers tracked them for an average of seven years.
Then, based on each person’s genotype at 133 relevant single-locus polymorphisms (SNPs) in their DNA, the team gave each participant a predictive ‘polygenic risk score’ for dementia.
These adults were also asked to report whether they had attended learning classes, without providing details regarding frequency, subjects, or academic level.
The research team chose to focus on data from the participants’ initial enrollment visit as well as a third follow-up assessment conducted between 2014 and 2018.
During these visits, participants completed a series of psychological and cognitive tests covering a wide range of subjects. These included fluid intelligence, visuospatial memory and reaction time. Overall, 1.1 percent of these people developed dementia.
