The art of aging

Content provided by the Faculty of the Harvard Medical School

The art of aging

Mental activity and creative pursuits may help stave off dementia and keep the mind clear.

Exercise the bod: We know that’s good for our physical health. In recent years, experiments in ani­mals have found that exercise may also improve mental abilities, and some human studies have come to the same conclusion.

But the surest way to exercise the brain, is to challenge it to think. Consid­erable research has explored the effects of creative and challenging activities on mental health, especially as we age.

Much of this research has focused on dementia, which usually involves loss of memory and “executive function” — the ability to plan, initiate, and manage. It has many causes, including alcoholism and low thyroid levels. But the main ones are strokes and, above all, Alzheimer’s disease.

Researchers have long noted that high educational levels and mentally challenging occupations are associated with reduced risk for Alzheimer’s, although sorting out cause and effect is difficult. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that “cognitive activities” — such as board games, crossword puzzles, or playing a musical instrument — seemed to be more protective against dementia than physical activities like walking and swimming. Of the physical activities studied, only social (ballroom) dancing rivaled the more mindful pursuits.

Art in the brain Some research suggests that the right parietal lobe collects visual input and the right temporal lobe integrates those perceptions. The left parietal and temporal lobes may inhibit some types of artistic expression through attention to visual detail and labeling, respectively.

Music helps with memory

Music seems to break through the fog of dementia. Several studies have found that it helps control disruptive behavior (wandering, agitation, and so on) in dementia patients. In 2003, for example, a small study in Australia found that playing slow-tempo Baroque music (pieces by Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, and others) reduced such behavior by 40%. Music seems to help Alzheimer’s patients retrieve long-term memories, which usually linger well after short-term memory is gone. And musical memory often appears to be spared in Alzheimer’s disease. A number of case studies and anecdotal reports tell of late-stage patients who are no longer able to speak or remember family members’ names but can still sing old songs, in tune and with all the lyrics. Researchers have found that participatory singing makes dementia patients more alert. The National Endowment for the Arts is funding research into whether participation in cultural programs like choral singing can improve the physical and mental health of older people.

Bursts of creativity

Dementia often makes people passive, so they’re even less inclined to draw, paint, or participate in other kinds of artistic activities. But sometimes the effect can be quite different. The most famous case is Willem de Kooning, the Abstract Expressionist painter who died in 1997 at age 92. De Kooning was a great success, despite notorious binge drinking. His dementia started in his 70s. In the beginning, de Kooning was amazingly productive, averaging nearly a painting a week over a period of four years. His art kept him alert and seemed to help him physically, too. One explanation: early Alzheimer’s may not affect unconscious “procedural” memory that controls the thoughts and hand movements needed to paint or play a musical instrument.

Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is an uncommon condition characterized by personality changes, loss of language, and inappropriate social behavior (swearing, poor hygiene, hypersexuality). In the early stages of the disease, some FTD patients develop artistic skills that they never had before. Their paintings and drawings are realistic or surrealistic and full of detail. Some researchers theorize that damage to the logical, word-oriented left side of the brain somehow unleashes activity in the right side of the brain, which controls spatial thinking and perception.

Make connections

Brain cells “think” by making connections to other brain cells. Each cell has a slender, electricity-conducting axon that branches out to make contact with the tentacle-like dendrites of its neighbors. Those contact points are called synapses. When communication between two brain cells is frequent and regular, the strength of the signal across synapses increases. Education and other forms of brain “exercise” may also increase the number of synapses. By giving you an abundance of strong synapses, mental activity may create a “cognitive reserve,” so your thinking stays clear, even as you lose brain cells and synapses to a disease like Alzheimer’s.

The usual advice for keeping your brain healthy is to exercise it — to “use it or lose it” like you would a muscle, so the strength and number of synaptic connections increase. It’s sound advice, based on what we know about the brain. But the example of de Kooning and others suggests we can “lose it” plenty and still be creative and enjoy the arts, especially music. More art and music in our lives might help us make the most of the brain cells we do have, instead of mourning ones we no longer have.

Last updated:	August 21, 2006