Hacker Remix

Brain endurance training improves older adults' cognitive, physical performance

109 points by gnabgib 9 months ago | 33 comments

daft_pink 9 months ago

I have an issue with this study. It reads as though the cognitive activity they did throughout the training period is the same as the cognitive test used at the beginning and the end for measurement.

Wouldn’t a person doing the same test for several weeks perform better than a person who experienced the test once? Are we sure they just didn’t get better at the test at the end by practicing vs actually improving cognitive performance that would help them other than taking these specific tests (psychomotor vigilance and stroop).

commandlinefan 9 months ago

I skimmed it but couldn't figure out what "brain endurance training" consists of here. I have heard that multilingual people and musicians never end up with alzheimers, though, so maybe this is an attempt to measure that relationship.

gnabgib 9 months ago

BET is described in a different (linked) paper: Prior brain endurance training improves endurance exercise performance https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1080/17461391.2022.21...

elric 9 months ago

Hate to burst your bubble, but Belgium (where very nearly everyone is multilingual) has roughly the same dementia rate as the UK (where, you know, people tend to just speak English): ~1.69% of the population vs ~1.56%.

Sauce: https://www.alzheimer-europe.org/dementia/prevalence-dementi...

capitainenemo 9 months ago

The studies I've read on bilingualism state that it delays onset by a few years, not that it prevents it. Let me duck for a cite though...

Here's one "Recent meta-analyses report that active bilingualism is related to later onset of symptoms and, thus, diagnosis of dementia by as much as 5–7 years relative to comparable monolinguals, despite brains in both cases accruing increased pathology similarly" https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8847162/

It also notes.. "However, as outlined below, simply being bi- or multilingual it is not sufficient for protection against cognitive decline, otherwise, a clear majority of the world’s population would be equally protected (considering that more than half of the world population speaks more than one language; De Houwer, 2021). It is important to keep in mind that only certain types of so-called ′active ′ bilingualism will have the maximum effect upon brain health, i.e., those who are amply exposed to their languages, use them regularly and are otherwise highly engaged in contexts that require linguistic switching."

capitainenemo 9 months ago

(that 5-7 years is "maximum effect" there are others that simply using two to some degree adds a few years of brain health - and that might be mentioned elsewhere in this meta analysis)

fuzzfactor 9 months ago

The older I get some of the things I see make it fairly challenging for the brain to endure . . .

nurettin 9 months ago

I find the whole serious scientific tone amusing because the simplest explanation to their somewhat better performance may be due to having a good mood for having people to socialize with and being attended to.

julianeon 9 months ago

I've noticed that surfing & bodyboarding are (maybe surprisingly) VERY cognitively challenging: watching the waves, moving your body through the water to intersect correctly, timing the launching of your board to coincide with a coming one and then making many micro-movements to stay on it, etc.

I wonder if this is an argument for prioritizing exercises like that, with a big mentally taxing component.

elijaht 9 months ago

This resonates with me - I primarily run and lift weights, neither of which require much quick thinking or movement outside of specific patterns. So while it's not my primary focus, I do try to include a few sessions of rock climbing and pickup soccer in my week.

I've definitely noticed an improvement in my ability to "express" the strength/endurance since I started doing that (more agile, coordinated, sense of how to apply force, general feeling of fitness).

In general I feel like novelty in exercise is understudied/appreciated

hammock 9 months ago

>novelty in exercise

"Cross training"

Although usually it is more about the physical qualities than the neurological ones

agumonkey 9 months ago

Complex balancing, shifting viewpoints, concurrent decision making.. all felt extremely beneficial to stimulate the brain

bubaumba 9 months ago

sure, how about chess? bad news, even champions show no exceptional skills outside of chess world. the same goes for tetris players.

in other word specialized training does not result in general abilities by default. I'm not saying is not beneficial or bad. but athletes and dancers aren't the smartest people for a reason.

sevensor 9 months ago

But what about chess boxing? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_boxing

dyauspitr 9 months ago

If you do it for a while it becomes a thoughtless process though. I no longer have to think about when to start paddling to catch the wave, I just know without any active thinking. Same with the balance, my muscles just know what to do.

gloryjulio 9 months ago

Yes, body mind connection is a real attribute in sports science. All kinds of exercises help the brain too

xtrapol8 9 months ago

There is a mythical and near magical capacity of the mind to manipulate a virtualized potential such that a sixth sense (spacial conceptual awareness) manifestation may be explored.

Beginning purely as a phantasm of the mind, this inner extradimentionality may become every bit as important to some as anything an ordinary person would consider of the “real world.”

This sense and muscular manipulation may be developed beyond comprehension of conventional minds. Entire worlds may be built within. Some might be satisfied with a well fortified library, or citadel sanctuary. The ordinary mind is savage or stunted not to know it is there.

For better or worse, exercising this development within will acquaint you with true personal power. And it will keep your mind from growing feeble.

graypegg 9 months ago

I can understand this, I'd probably describe the effect as being "more awake" if I do a crossword puzzle AND a walk in the morning, vs one or the other. I really can't quantify that at all, and I think this study had a bit of trouble doing the same (using results from 1 cognitive test across a pretty small cohort), but it does feel real.

pants2 9 months ago

It's crazy to me how I can be completely stumped on a crossword puzzle, and then after a jog I come home and knock it out. Really kicks your brain into high gear.

Cpoll 9 months ago

My experience is that time away from the crossword doing anything else works this way.

AStonesThrow 9 months ago

There's a real tendency to overthink, and be too close to a complex problem, in just about any intellectual endeavor.

I believe that it's important to try and refrain from making big decisions, or big changes, in a project before you've had an opportunity to step away from it and clear your mind: with a shower, a jog, a nap, or all of the above.

It's amazing how my perspective can change after stepping away, sometimes voluntarily. My hot temper has an opportunity to cool down. My analytical neurons have opportunities to chew on the problem for a while. I make better connections and get a better "big picture" view after zooming out.

dukeofdoom 9 months ago

Daily walks too, rain or shine.

bloopernova 9 months ago

A dog makes it much easier to find the motivation to walk. Mine needs about 5 miles of walks a day; after a few months of building up to that I feel pretty good each day. I still suffer from back pain and sciatica and other crap, but it feels like I have more capacity to cope with things nowadays (as compared to how shitty I felt in the year between our previous dog passing and adopting our current dog)

Moving also helps digestion, fresh air is great, vitamin D from sunlight on skin does wonders for you, and you can turn over work problems as you walk.

When I worked in the Renaissance Centre in Detroit, I used the many flights of stairs (39 floors in the outer towers) in addition to walking. Walking is great, but those stairs really got the blood pumping and muscles working. I never did stay long enough to train up enough to tackle the central tower's 73 flights of stairs. I think some firefighters ascend the central tower in full protective gear as a commemoration of the world trade centre attacks.

gcanyon 9 months ago

I worked in the Century City Twin Towers about twenty years ago. There was a firefighter who would come out to the building every month or so and climb the stairs, basement to roof, with 100lbs of gear/hose on his back. Twice. That's something like 1400 feet of vertical.

He did it just for the exercise, and to be prepared in case he had to actually do it someday.

jerlam 9 months ago

Stairs are great exercise, and a bit too unsafe/unnatural to do in a gym. Requires a lot more coordination than walking.

It's too bad that in most modern buildings, the stairs are only to be used in case of fire, and usually locked from the outside and alarmed.

elijaht 9 months ago

There are stairstepper machines in gyms! They're great (IMO one of the best bang for your buck in terms of time and injury risk)

anigbrowl 9 months ago

>He doesn't know about Bulgarian split squats

chubot 9 months ago

That’s honestly awesome — someone who takes his job seriously. And I don’t doubt that he may need to call on that ability, and that achieving and maintaining this habit has all sorts of great side effects in his life, physically and mentally

senkora 9 months ago

> Mine needs about 5 miles of walks a day

That's a lot of walking. Mine gets about 2 miles a day and it takes about 60 minutes. Sometimes I do a 2 mile jog with him which he loves.

If you don't mind me asking, how long do you spend walking your dog? Is it a fast pace and/or do you count dog park time somehow?

bloopernova 9 months ago

Generally we'll do a couple of half mile 10 minute walks in the morning. Then a longer hour mid afternoon which usually covers about 3 miles. My mile time varies from 16 minutes to about 19. Lastly, at night we walk a slower pace, taking 30 minutes to do a mile. Where I live, there's lots of options to change routes and to see/smell new things.

I unfortunately can't run: scar tissue messed up some left foot tendons. To let my dog run, we go to tennis courts, baseball fields, and throw a ball for him.

senkora 9 months ago

Thanks for the response! Your dog is lucky to have you

agumonkey 9 months ago

I don't have a dog. But I occasionally have a squirrel. But they're evanescent

smitty1110 9 months ago

[flagged]

dang 9 months ago

"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html