Crosswords and Daily Brain Teasers Have a Major Impact on Aging
These studies have shown that adults over the age of 50 who regularly pick up puzzles tend to have the short term memory of someone 8 years younger and the grammatical reasoning ability of someone 10 years younger.
Corbett told Inverse that \”we hope this will encourage people consider how they challenge the brain on a daily basis and maybe consider taking up puzzles, or evidence-based games to keep their minds healthy.\”
Corbett’s research is among the few that show that solving puzzles regularly has a lasting effect on memory, cognitive decline and the gradual loss of problem-solving abilities that come with aging. (This is also true for brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s.) The Bronx Aging Study, for example, showed that patients with dementia who completed crosswords lost their memory 2.54 years after those who did not.
Source:
https://www.inverse.com/article/55901-brain-teasers-effects-on-cognitive-decline
