United States: A new study reported in the Journal of Cognitive Enhancement that has revealed elderly people who engaged themselves in mentally demanding tasks including reading or solving puzzles had better memory, working memory, attention, and processing speed than others several years later if they remained active in these areas.
More significantly, those with the greatest levels of participation demonstrated an improved quality of cognitive status at all time points examined in the research.
As reported by Psypost, given that older people are more susceptible to develop dementia, cognitive impairment is seen in most elderly people as a first sign of dementia. Mild cognitive impairment is a decline to mental health that is noticeable, however it is not severe enough to cause an individual to have a decreased ability to perform their tasks.
Mild cognitive impairment converts to dementia at a rate of about 10% per year; thus, it is an important field to study.

The existing interventions for the management of cognitive impairment encompass pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions; however, treated is well known to have side effects and its long-term administration is intolerable.
Most practically applicable non-pharmacologic approaches are gaining interest as the methods of preventing or slowing down the progression of the cognitive decline. Nevertheless, the questions arises if intensive participation in such activity is beneficial at certain level for cognition. That is why the researchers behind the new study tried to fill this gap intentionally.
In this case, the cognitive care and the health promoting effects of cognitive activities for the elderly are the areas of interest with the studious work of Jungjoo (Jay) Lee an assistant professor within the School of Health Professions, College of Nursing and Health Professions, University of Southern Mississippi.
“Other related past works categorise actions like reading books, newspapers, and journaling as sedentary, and suggest that such should be re-oriented to promote physical activities in trying to cope with cognition. On the other hand, it would be more beneficial to focus on what cognitive activities can do more positively than less.
Avoiding them as part of the cognitive care strategies from the longitudinal perspective.”
The research team analyzed data form a large ongoing survey called the Health and the Retirement Study HRS which collects detailed information on aging Americans and for this study they focused on the data from 2012 to 2020 examining a subset of 5,932 older adults with MCI and the participants were divided into three groups which are based on the level of the participation in the cognitively stimulating leisure activities: high, medium and low and these specific level were determined based on how frequently participants engaged in the activities like reading and playing games or doing puzzles.