Brain Fitness Tip of the Week: Internet Searching

People who have heard me talk about MiamiBrainFitness (and now, South Florida Brain Fitness, or SoFlaBrainFitness) have usually heard me talk about the work Gary Small and his colleagues have done at UCLA. Several years ago, they showed that participation in a 14-day healthy lifestyle course could improve older persons’ scores on cognitive tests and change how their brains worked on brain scans.

The group recently presented a paper at the meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, Dr. Teena Moody, also at UCLA, reports that Internet searching can improve brain function in persons aged 55 years and older. Although details of the study are only available in news reports at the moment, reports are interesting.

They show that just using the  Internet for one hour a day over several weeks changed patterns of brain activation in persons without much Internet experience. In addition, after using the Internet, the same people activated new areas of the brain that may be related to working memory and making decisions.

Dr. Moody suggests that Internet searching might be a useful form of brain exercise (click here for the story on the UCLA press web site).

While these results are very much preliminary, they add to a steadily growing body of research that shows that older persons can benefit from mental activities, and those activities can make real differences in how the brain functions.

So the tip of the week is this: If you don’t use the Internet, consider giving it a try. You don’t have to invest a lot of money in a computer and special software to get started. Almost all public libraries these days have public use computers. Many libraries have people who can help you get started.

All you need to know to get started is how to open up a web browser (that the program the lets you surf the  Web) and how to type “www.google.com” into the browser. Once you get to Google, you can type in a few words to find something you’re interested in. Maybe search on history or science, or to find out about a car you might buy – or look for information about a place you might want to travel to.