This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Diverse and sustained social activities may boost cognitive performance and slow the decline in brain health associated with aging, suggest the findings of a large international study, published online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. Regularly engaging in three or more of these activities, and including volunteering and sports club membership among them, seems to be particularly effective at helping to keep minds sharp, the findings indicate.
Dementia, which is preceded by cognitive impairment, is estimated to affect nearly 153 million people by 2050, point out the researchers. While several studies have looked at the association between social activities and both cognitive function and dementia, the findings have been inconsistent, they add. This might be down to small sample sizes, limited geographic diversity and differences in the definitions and measurements used for social activity and cognitive outcomes, they suggest.
In a bid to overcome some of these issues, the researchers drew on pooled long-term data from five nationally representative surveys spanning 24 countries. These surveys were: the U.S. Health and Retirement Study (HRS, waves 10–15, 2010–21); the English Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSA, waves 4–9, 2008–19); the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS, waves 1–4, 2011–18); the Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS, waves 3–5, 2012–18); and the Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE, waves 4–8, 2011–20).
Participants in each wave were asked about the type and number of social activities they engaged in, and their cognitive performance was assessed at each wave using tests of memory and executive function. The test results produced a z score of global cognitive function, with higher z scores indicative of better cognitive performance. In all, 57,793 participants were included in the study.
Their average age ranged from 57 to 73, and they were tracked for an average of six years. Analysis of the pooled cognitive z-scores showed that those who engaged in social activities had significantly higher scores than those who didn't, with scores rising in tandem with the number of social activities. Engaging in at least three of these seemed to afford the greatest level of protection against impairments in memory and executive function: those who did this had higher yearly cognitive z-scores during the tracking period than those who engaged in none.
Volunteering and sports club membership were associated with a lower risk of cognitive decline across all five groups, while attending training courses and taking care of children were significantly associated with higher cognitive z-scores year on year. But active involvement in political, community, church and religious groups wasn't consistently associated with cognitive enhancement. Further analysis indicated that the positive associations between social activities and cognitive function were stronger among women, those aged 60 and older, those with higher levels of education, those who weren't depressed, those who lived alone, those of normal weight, those living in rural areas and those who smoked and/or drank alcohol.
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