Senior News Line: Avoiding cognitive decline

Scroll around the internet to look for ideas about avoiding cognitive decline, and you’ll find a wide variety of suggestions and studies. One thing many of them agree on, however, is the value of playing games.

UCLA has it narrowed down to four types in particular. Brain training games came in at the top of their list after they did a review of studies about improving cognitive function.

Brain games were found to help with our ability to plan and focus, to remember information we hear, to recall information and to help with information processing speed.

Crossword puzzles, next on the list, have value even if we only do them once a month. But more often has a greater impact.

Number puzzles, it is said, can have a powerful impact on memory, reasoning and attention. Again, the more often you do them, the greater the result.

Last on their list is three-dimensional video games, such as Super Mario. Memory improved after only playing for two weeks.

But the various universities and research groups don’t all agree.

Columbia University concluded that crossword puzzles were better than computer video games for memory function. One study that went on for years determined that training for brain processing speed still had benefits decades later.

To be considered: Even if you don’t have any signs of cognitive decline, starting early to keep ahead of it is no doubt valuable. And since the studies don’t agree about which method is best, perhaps we should sample among all of them.

A crossword puzzle per day, some time spent on computerized games, working on cognitive brain games for a few hours each week, joining others to work on a jigsaw puzzle, playing chess or mahjong or even solitaire — surely it all adds up, right?

It’s never too late to start.