Aardvark Daily

Please visit the sponsor!

Good news for aging geeks

As you age it's only natural that your cognitive abilities will decline.

In most cases we retain enough of our brain power to ensure a full and happy life until some other system failure relegates you to the mortuary and the final "Game Over" banner appears.

Of course some are less fortunate and suffer the evils of severe decline, usually caused by some form of dementia so there's a lot of work being undertaken to come up with ways to reduce that risk and even manage it should the worst happen.

If you're a geek, especially one who likes cutting computer code, there's some good news in the results of these studies.

It is becoming very obvious that the brain responds to regular stimulation much like our muscles and it's a "use it or lose it" situation.

This Guardian story reports a that learning a second language or two does wonders as protective mechanism to preserve our cognitive abilities as we age.

In fact, becoming bilingual can reduce the effective age of your brain by as much as 6 years and being able to speak four languages could wind back your brain-age by as much as 13 years.

When I read this I wondered if there was any parallels with learning computer languages such as C, Pascal, Python or whatever -- so I exercised my Google-fu to find out.

Google's AI summary told me:

I couldn't find any studies that quantified the effect of computer-language fluency in the way that the study highlighed in that Guardian story did for spoken languages but Gemini told me:

With a little more probing however, this distinction was claimed:

Based on this, I would perhaps expect that learning a computer language or two will definitely keep your grey-matter younger and slow cognitive decline -- however, if you also spent a bit of time learning French then perhaps the benefits would compound due to the different regions of the brain involved in each process.

As a final option or perhaps part of a full brain workout, you could also learn to play a musical instrument (if you can't already). There is good evidence that this is also a powerful tool in delaying cognitive delay as we age.

Perhaps some of the factors associated with various forms of cognitive decline are genetic and some are also environmental but one thing's for sure -- if you really want to maximise your chances of retaining a high level of brain function for the rest of your life there's a fair bit you can do to boost your chances.

Carpe Diem folks!

Please visit the sponsor!

Here is a PERMANENT link to this column

Rank This Aardvark Page

Change Font