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(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- You can teach an old dog new tricks, say UCLA scientists who found that older adults with little Internet experience were able to trigger key centers in the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning after just one week of surfing the Web.
"We found that for older people with minimal experience, performing Internet searches for even a relatively short period of time can change brain activity patterns and enhance function," study author Dr. Gary Small, professor of psychiatry at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA and the author of the book iBrain, was quoted as saying.
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The findings suggest that Internet training can stimulate neural activation patterns and have the potential to enhance brain function and cognition in older adults. As the brain ages, structural and functional changes occur, including atrophy, reductions in cell activity and increases in deposits of amyloid plaques and tau tangles, all of which can impact cognitive function. Research has shown that mental stimulation similar to that which occurs in individuals who frequently use the Internet may affect the efficiency of cognitive processing and alter the way the brain encodes new information.
The UCLA team worked with 24 neurologically normal volunteers between the ages of 55 and 78. Prior to the study, half the participants used the Internet daily, while the other half had very
little experience. Age, educational level and gender were similar between the two groups.
Study participants performed Web searches while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans, which recorded the subtle brain-circuitry changes experienced during this activity by measuring the level of cerebral blood flow during cognitive tasks.
After the initial brain scan, participants conducted Internet searches from home for one hour a day for a total of seven days over a two-week period. Participants were asked to use the Internet to answer questions about various topics by reading information from different websites. Participants then received a second brain scan using the same Internet simulation task but with different topics.
The first scans of the low-experience participants demonstrated brain activity in regions controlling language, reading, memory and visual abilities. The second brain scans of these participants, conducted after the practice Internet searches at home, demonstrated activation of these same regions, coupled with additional activation of areas of the brain known to be important in working memory and decision-making.
"The results suggest that searching online may be a simple form of brain exercise that might be employed to enhance cognition in older adults," Teena D. Moody, the study's first author and a senior research associate at the Semel Institute at UCLA, was quoted as saying. When performing an Internet search, the ability to hold important information in working memory and to extract the important points from competing graphics and words is essential.
SOURCE: Presented at the meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, October 19, 2009
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