Science & Health: Fighting memory loss

Sudoku, crosswords and handheld games not only offer amusement
but also keep the mind sharp, and are becoming more popular among
older people, according to Gary Small, director of the UCLA Center
on Aging.

Mental exercises such as those games can help fight the effects
of aging on the brain, he said.

“Forgetfulness is a result of normal aging. It’s
part of a natural process. … Cognitive exercises can help you
improve the function of your brain and make you feel better,”
said Dr. Gal Bitan, assistant professor of neurology at the UCLA
David Geffen School of Medicine.

Small said that for some people, two-thirds of what determines
their health as they age might be in their own power.

“There is a lot we can do to take control of our future
health,” he added.

Small conducted a study showing that after two weeks on a
program of healthful food, daily walks, relaxation techniques and
mental exercises, participants improved their memories
significantly.

“We looked at their brain scans and saw dramatic
improvement in their efficiency. They did more, performed better,
and used less brain energy,” Small said.

The entire brain is affected by aging, Bitan said. Some of the
effects of aging include the overall mass of the organ shrinking,
synapses firing more slowly, and cell death.

“(People who are not affected by Alzheimer’s) can
definitely improve their memory function with these exercises, but
there hasn’t been solid proof of correlation between
cognitive exercises and delay or improvement of the condition of
Alzheimer’s,” Bitan said.

Alzheimer’s disease, which is associated with aging,
primarily strikes the hippocampus and the cortex and affects the
conversion of short-term memory into long-term memory, he said.

Bitan compared Alzheimer’s to entering data into a word
processor without saving. Once the program is closed, the data is
lost because it was not saved to the hard drive.

“(Alzheimer’s) is not necessarily related to normal
aging,” he said.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health,
Alzheimer’s disease affects an estimated 4.5 million
Americans and, among people age 65 and older, is the most common
cause of dementia, which is the deterioration of the brain’s
cognitive faculties.

“In normal aging, there is a slow and incremental
deterioration in overall brain function, but some people live over
100 with very little loss of mental capacity,” Bitan
said.

There is a belief that the more one exercises the brain, the
longer it would take for Alzheimer’s to deteriorate the
brain, but Bitan said this has not been proven.

Though researchers are aware of the causes of Alzheimer’s
disease, there is currently no cure, only drugs to temporarily
treat the symptoms rather than the cause of the disease.

But technological innovations, such as a new scanner which can
show physical evidence of Alzheimer’s, offer the possibility
of learning more about structural and chemical abnormalities in the
brain.