Jigsaw puzzles boost brain brawn
Dave Dawson flexes his mental muscle doing this jig-saw puzzle at our kitchen table at home in Vancouver.
In this photo, Dave is doing “neurobics” – even though he doesn’t realize it at the time.
Doing a jigsaw puzzle is a type of mental activity some call “neurobics.” Scientists who study aging – called gerontologists (in case you didn’t already know that) – say our brains are strengthened when we do things like puzzles, crosswords, and learning musical instruments that are new to us.
Puzzle therapy?
According to Trish Donroe Barker, who wrote an article called The Healing Power Of Jigsaw Puzzles, doing jigsaw puzzles can lead to “amazing things.”
I found Barker’s article via Google today, then checked out her company website: Connections Jigsaw Puzzles for Healing.
“Jigsaw puzzles quiet the mind and induce a state of creative meditation. They tap into our creativity and rewire our brains to make ‘connections,’” reads the Connections website. “Several large scale studies (the most notable being the MacArthur Study) found that people who participate in leisure time activities such as jigsaw puzzles have a better quality of life, longer life expectancy and decreased incidence of such brain illnesses as dementia, memory loss and most notably, Alzheimer’s Disease.”
The MacArthur Study on Healthy Aging
Barker’s website inspired me to search for more info on the MacArthur Study. One (of a few) interesting findings was this article published by the Memory Disorders Project at Rutgers-Newark University: “Use It Or Lose It: The Key To Healthy Brain Aging.”
The article describes the MacArthur Study on Healthy Aging, conducted between 1988 and 1996 in the north-eastern United States. Scientists tracked nearly 1,200 people between 70 and 79, looking at their cognitive functions, physical performance, balance, activities, social networks, etc.
The researchers noted commonalties among the folks whose mental functioning remained the highest. Those who exercised, maintained social connections, and kept mentally alert (with the jig-saw puzzles, etc.) tended to stay at a higher level of mental function and alertness than their peers who were more sedentary, less social, and less inclined towards “neurobics.”
I’d call this good news for people who might, perhaps, feel a need to justify their enjoyment of jig-saw puzzles. Not that they need to…
I seem to need to. I ask people if they want to do a puzzle with me and they all leave! I love jigsaw puzzles and I used to spend until the wee hours of the morning with my mom, siblings or cousin’s doing them. Fun stuff.
I’ll do a puzzle with you!