
I watched a few presentations at a neuroscience conference and I was particularly interested in one series of lectures called: “Neuroscientist on loss of cognitive function due to repetition”.
The neuroscientist studied people who had done the same job for five or more years and then studied people who were new to the same job. They scanned their brain activity using some sophisticated imaging technology and they found the new people making many more connections between different parts of their brains then the group of people who had done the job more then five years. They also interviewed and performed standardized cognitive tests on the two groups.
The researcher concluded from the interviews and scans that the new employee group was learning and thinking about the job task, but in contrast the experienced group was just remembering what to do, not thinking about it. They also found evidence of cognitive decline in the group of experienced workers who appeared to depend heavily on memory and evidence of normal or above normal cognitive skills in the group of younger and same age inexperienced workers.
The researchers stated this study was consistent with other research in suggesting that we suffer from cognitive decline at an earlier age then popularly thought due a lack of active learning.
The second lecturer was studying repetition in life routines, work routines and personal efforts to learn new things to determine if these effected gross cognitive functions. They had their test subjects complete questionnaires about their daily routines including food, clothing, transportation to work, reading habits, hobbies and personal interests.
The second researcher stated that her research project showed evidence that her subjects with fixed routines and little variance showed greater cognitive decline at an earlier age then her subjects engaged in daily variance of activities, job task variance or who were involved in personal habits or hobbies that featured active learning at their core. She made a point that the cognitive decline was not apparent due to intact memory. But that cognitive testing showed it.
She speculated that the sudden onset of dementia we sometimes note in people after they retire or suddenly stop working may not be so sudden after all. It may have been hidden by intact memory and repetitive routines. But faced with a sudden life change and unfamiliar routines, a persons cognitive deficits are more apparent as family and medical staff watch them struggle to learn new things, which is not dependent on memory, but the ability to read and listen to new information and process it correctly to complete a task. The final blow comes when their memory starts to fail and institutionalization in a nursing home soon follows.
After hearing and watching these presentations I processed it in my mind. My observations about modern life are these; We eat the same foods every day, our favorite cereal, drink our favorite coffee, wear the same clothes, drive the same route to work, do the same job, go home, eat, sleep and then wake up the next day to do it all again. Apparently just remembering what we did yesterday and doing it perfectly again today, isn’t enough to keep our brains sharp. It appears that we need to exercise our brains to keep them sharp.
So just like muscles, our brains need exercise. And apparently just like muscle cells, if we don’t use them, we lose them.
Imagine that....
✍️written by Shortsegments.

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