Monterey, CA Caregivers Should Encourage Seniors To Try Brain Games And Get Them Involved In Hobbies, Other Social Interaction

Using brain games to stave off the possibility of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease (or slow it for those with early-stage dementia) does help but experts warn that you shouldn’t be playing the same type of game over and over which just teaches you how to play the game and get better at it, but not much else.  “It’s like, you walk through fresh snow, you leave a trace.  If you walk the same route again, the trace gets deeper and deeper,” said Ursula Staudinger, director of the Butler Columbia Aging Center at Columbia University.  “The fact that structural changes occur [in the brain] does not imply that in general this brain has become more capable.  It has become more capable of doing exactly the tasks it was practicing,” she said.  In addition to trying various games, we find that getting a lot of social interaction does wonders for our senior clients, most of which are in their 90’s.