Visiting friends, attending parties and going to church may help keep your brain healthy, according to research conducted at Rush. The study, posted online in Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association, shows that frequent social activity may help to prevent or delay dementia in old age. This study is a follow up on previous papers from our group showing that social activity is related to less cognitive decline in older adults.
In this study, we show that social activity is associated with an increased risk of developing dementia and mild cognitive impairment, and that the least socially active older adults developed dementia an average of five years before the most socially active." Bryan James, PhD, associate professor of internal medicine at Rush Social activity can strengthen neural circuits in the brain, making them more resistant to the buildup of pathology that occurs with age. Social behavior activates the same areas of the brain involved in thinking and memory.
Authors note that the findings highlight the value of social activity as a possible community-level intervention for reducing dementia. The findings suggest that more frequent social activity points to a 38% reduction in dementia risk and a 21% reduction in mild cognitive impairment risk, compared to the least socially active. In addition, a five-year delay in dementia onset has been estimated to yield an additional three years of life and an economic benefit of reducing dementia costs .