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« On the climate radicals | Main | Did-you-know category » Thursday, April 26, 2007Use it or lose it?It's "Brains!" week over at brainy Slate, and one article poses the tantalizing question: "Can You Keep Your Brain from Aging?" That question has been everywhere recently, fueled by stories like this one, in which it's suggested that fiddling with brain teasers on the hand-held Nintendo DS -- or doing crossword puzzles -- just might keep you mentally limber into your nineties. The artful Slate article throws in some notes of skepticism. But last year, in the debut issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, published by the Association for Psychological Science, Timothy Salthouse, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, was even more dubious. After a thorough review of dozens of studies, Salthouse concluded: Despite frequent assertions of the mental-exercise hypothesis, its intuitive plausibility, and an understandably strong desire to believe that it is true ... there is currently little scientific evidence that differential engagement in mentally stimulating activities alters the rate of mental aging. Still, he ended on a chipper note. Even if the hypothesis is false, why not act as if it were true? Crosswords and similar games are fun -- and, at the very least, "if you can still do it, then you know that you have not yet lost it."  Posted by Christopher Shea at 05:35 PM
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