You can teach an old brain new tricks. It’s the body that won’t listen.
Researchers at the University of Hamburg in Germany recently tested to see if older people could learn to juggle as well as young people.
A team led by Janina Boyke, from the department of systems neuroscience, tested healthy men and women between 50 and 67 years old.
The goal: to keep three balls in motion for at least 60 seconds.
That’s tough for people of any age.
The researchers used high-resolution, three-dimensional magnetic resonance imaging and voxel-based morphometry, which allows for the mapping of sections of the brain.
None of the subjects had ever tried juggling before and brain scans taken after the training period showed that they had learned a new skill and their brains registered the new skill.
They compared the results to an earlier experiment with young adults and found the structural changes were the same in both groups.
In other words they proved that older adults could learn this stuff as well as younger folks.
So don’t call that high school kid if you have problems with your computer.
You can learn to fix it. Or, worst case, juggle it.
In both age group studies, the subjects were scanned before they learned to juggle, after three months of juggling and then three months after they stopped juggling.
All groups showed increases in the visual motion area of their brains. But there was a difference.
Older people showed increased gray matter in the hippocampus (which plays a role in short term memory and navigation) and nucleus accumbens (associated with reward, laughter, pleasure and addition).
However the activity in the younger group was transient and returned to the same condition after three months without practice.
What does that prove?
Human brains retain some structural plasticity as they age and older brains can retain the youthful ability to learn new skills, the researchers said.
The bad news?
Well you may be able to learn to juggle when you are older, but your body – your eyesight, that creaky arthritis, and other physical limitations of aging – will slow you down physically.
The grandkids will love it.
So forget about joining the circus. But take pleasure in your ability to show off your semi-professional juggling skills to your grandkids.
If juggling seems a bit challenging, you could check out our casual games at our website – Brain Games Software. You’ll use your brain more and your hand-eye coordination less.
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