A study (“Midlife in the United States”) assessing 3,343 men and women aged 32-84 (mean age 56), of whom almost 40% had at least a 4-year college degree, has found evidence that frequent cognitive activity can counteract the detrimental effect of poor education on age-related cognitive decline. Although, as expected, those with higher education engaged in cognitive activities more often and did better on the memory tests, those with lower education who engaged in reading, writing, attending lectures, doing word games or puzzles once or week or more had memory scores similar to people with more education on tests of episodic memory (although this effect did not occur for executive functioning).

It’s now well established that older brains tend to find it harder to filter out irrelevant information. But now a new study suggests that that isn’t all bad. The study compared the performance of 24 younger adults (17-29) and 24 older adults (60-73) on two memory tasks separated by a 10-minute break. In the first task, they were shown pictures overlapped by irrelevant words, told to ignore the words and concentrate on the pictures only, and to respond every time the same picture appeared twice in a row. The second task required them to remember how the pictures and words were paired together in the first task. The older adults showed a 30% advantage over younger adults in their memory for the preserved pairs. It’s suggested that older adults encode extraneous co-occurrences in the environment and transfer this knowledge to subsequent tasks, improving their ability to make decisions.

A number of rodent studies have shown that blueberries can improve aging memory; now for the first time, a human study provides evidence. In the small study, nine older adults (mean age 76) with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) drank the equivalent of 2-2 l/2 cups of a commercially available blueberry juice every day. After three months they showed significantly improved paired associate learning and word list recall. The findings will of course have to be confirmed by larger trials, but they are consistent with other research.

A companion study involving 12 older adults (75-80) with MCI found that those who drank a pure variety of Concord grape juice for 12 weeks also saw their performance progressively improve on tests in which they had to learn lists and remember items placed in a certain order.

More data from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States has revealed that cognitive abilities reflect to a greater extent how old you feel, not how old you actually are. Of course that may be because cognitive ability contributes to a person’s wellness and energy. But it also may reflect benefits of trying to maintain a sense of youthfulness by keeping up with new trends and activities that feel invigorating.

Following on from studies showing that a Mediterranean-like diet may be associated with a lower risk of Alzheimer's disease and may lengthen survival in people with Alzheimer's, a six-year study of 712 New Yorkers has revealed that those who were most closely following a Mediterranean-like diet were 36% less likely to have brain infarcts (small areas of dead tissue linked to thinking problems), compared to those who were least following the diet. Those moderately following the diet were 21% less likely to have brain damage. The association was comparable to the effects of high blood pressure — that is, not eating a Mediterranean-like diet was like having high blood pressure. The Mediterranean diet includes high intake of vegetables, legumes, fruits, cereals, fish and monounsaturated fatty acids such as olive oil; low intake of saturated fatty acids, dairy products, meat and poultry; and mild to moderate amounts of alcohol.