Posted by Carrie on October 26, 2009, 10:52 am
I just read an about interesting study that showed surfing the web for an hour a day might help protect our brains from age-related decline. It was done by the same researchers who studied the effect of doing crosswords.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20091020/hl_hsn/websurftosaveyouragingbrain
For the research, 24 neurologically normal adults, aged 55 to 78, were asked to surf the Internet while hooked up to an MRI machine. Before the study began, half the participants had used the Internet daily, and the other half had little experience with it.
After an initial MRI scan, the participants were instructed to do Internet searches for an hour on each of seven days in the next two weeks. They then returned to the clinic for more brain scans.
"At baseline, those with prior Internet experience showed a much greater extent of brain activation," Small said.
After at-home practice, however, those who had just been introduced to the Internet were catching up to those who were old hands, the study found.
"This is a demonstration that, over a relatively short period of time, patterns of brain activation while engaging in cognitive activities change," Lipton said. "That is at least a first step toward gaining insight into the mechanisms that might allow cognitive engagement to influence brain function."
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