Yet another thing the Internet is good for: It prevents you from losing your marbles

This is a bit off-topic but it’s a fascinating study – the over 55s who go online see improvements in their brain function after just one week.

UCLA researchers presented the findings of a study at the Society for Neuroscience. Two groups of 55-78 year olds were chosen. One with Internet experience and the other without.

The net newbies were told to go online and conduct searches for an hour a day, for a total of seven days over a two-week period and given two different tasks with a brain scan in-between.

The first scan showed brain activity on the regions controlling language, memory and visual abilities. The second one showed “activation of the same areas” as well as seeing their ‘inferior frontal gyrus’ being stimulated – or in plain English the bits of the brain good for memory and decision making.

Previous research showed that online searches result in more than a 2x increase in brain activation in older adults…so an idea for Sanatogen or the like – do a campaign to get the elderly online (the point is of course, many of them already are)

Via Science Daily Image – HovaHe