USA: Research Shows Old Dogs Can Learn New Tricks

COLOMBIA, Missouri (The Colombia Daily Tribune), July 2, 2007: Ann Gowans of Columbia, Missouri, who has a doctorate in social gerontology and medical sociology and has worked and taught in the field for 25 years, is the author of this feature on Alzheimer's Disease, titled: THE THIRD AGE. As promised, here are a few things to watch for when you want information about possible dementia. The seven cardinal signs of Alzheimer’s disease are as follows: First: Asking the same question over and over again. Second: Repeating the same story, word for word, again and again. Third: Forgetting how to cook, how to make repairs, how to play cards or other activities that were previously done with ease. This is not forgetting names; it is forgetting processes. Fourth: Losing the ability to pay bills or balance a checkbook. Fifth: Getting lost in familiar surroundings or often misplacing household objects. Sixth: Neglecting to bathe or wearing the same clothes over and over again, while insisting that they have taken a bath or that their clothes are still clean. Seventh: Relying on a spouse or others to make decisions or answer questions they previously would have handled themselves. If you want to delay some of the problems associated with dementia or even help the perfectly ordinary problems of cognitive decline that all who get old experience, teach yourself to learn some new tricks and challenges. You actually can teach an old human many new tricks. Michael Marsiske, associate professor of clinical and health psychology at the University of Florida in Gainesville, told us: "If people aren’t challenging themselves because they believe that they’re past their prime at learning new skills, they’re completely wrong." He co-authored a study that found that seniors who were assigned to 10 training sessions performed better than those who got no training, and they still did better on those tests five years after the training ended. Marsiske said, "Even in areas like memory, reasoning, and speed, which decline with age, people can experience substantial and long-lasting gains with a pretty small investment." For example: Reasoning: Seniors learned to analyze new material and reach a conclusion about it. For example, they had to look at a series of letters like A,L,B,A,M,B,A and predict the next letter. By regrouping the series into triplets – A,L,B and A,M,B – it becomes clear that the letter between A and B is advancing alphabetically. So the letter following the final A must be N. Processing: Seniors sat at computer screen that flashed an image at them. As training advanced, the image became more and more complex, so the viewer had to take in more and more information at a single glance - a skill necessary for driving. Memory: Participants learned four strategies to improve verbal memory: Make it meaningful: Link each item on a list to something that’s meaningful to you. For example, if one work is "dog," link it to a memory of your favorite dog. Organize: Organize items on a list into categories. For example, if "hamburger" and "chair" are on a list, put them into categories such as "food" and "furniture." Remembering the categories will cue you to remember the items themselves. Visualize: Create a detailed image of a word in your mine. Example: If the word is "dog" think of what a dog feels, looks, and smells like. Associate: Link items on a list in a story. If the words on the list are "dog" and "apple," think of a dog biting an apple and spitting it out because he doesn’t like it. Marsiske doesn’t think such training would help younger people. It might not, he said, because "younger people don’t have as much room to improve, especially in areas like memory." He also believes that there is something people can do to protect their future brainpower. "We know that people who have more education, or more challenging and complex jobs, enter late life at higher levels of mental functioning and may decline at a slower rate, scientists call this ‘building cognitive reserve.’ " The more widely you read, study and take on challenging hobbies, say like learning Web design or learning how to use a digital camera, the more you challenge yourself mentally all through adulthood. I know, this means we all need to get with it and quit relying on the grandchildren to figure out our computer problems and program the various technologies that come into our lives on a regular basis. If you have that kind of reserve already built into your brain, from all the difficult mental tasks that you have taken on, then once you start to decline, you’ve got way more in the brain bank, just like someone who enters retirement with a bigger nest egg. And a more important nest egg, from my point of view. When you set up an intellectually challenging lifestyle, you start declining from a much higher level, so it takes longer to reach a threshold of functional loss, which we all will as we reach really old age. The message is clear, use it to capacity and keep it longer. Not a bad plan at all. Copyright © 2007 The Columbia Daily Tribune. All Rights Reserved