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New research suggests being curious can protect brain health as you age.
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Older adults who stay curious and learn new things may be able to offset Alzheimer’s disease.
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By tapping into your senses, you can easily experience newness in a known environment.
Little kids ask questions about absolutely everything: why you have to flush the toilet, what the backstory is for a stranger’s tattoo, what love means. The list goes on and nothing is off-limits. But that curiosity tends to drop off as we grow up and get older. And apparently, recent research says that’s not a good thing for your brain.
A new study suggests that older adults who maintain a healthy dose of curiosity and try to learn new things may be able to help offset or even prevent Alzheimer’s disease. And yes, that almost sounds too easy to be true.
So, what’s behind this curiosity-dementia link? Women’s Health tapped neurologists for more.
Meet the experts: Clifford Segil, DO, is a neurologist at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, CA; Amit Sachdev, MD, MS, is the medical director in the Department of Neurology at Michigan State University
What did the study find?
The study, which was published in PLOS One, recruited more than 1,200 people between the ages of 20 and 84, and asked them to fill out an online questionnaire with the goal of figuring out how curious they were in general.
The researchers then asked participants to guess the answers to hard trivia questions that most people likely wouldn’t know. For example, What was the first country to give women the right to vote? (Answer: New Zealand!) After they guessed the answer, participants were asked how interested they were to know the answer before they were shown it.
The researchers discovered that people who have more “state curiosity” (which is a fleeting desire to know something) also have more “trait curiosity” (i.e. they’re naturally curious), and vice versa. But the researchers also discovered that the drive to learn new things dropped in early adulthood, increased sharply after middle age, and continued upward into older age.
The researchers said in a press release that older adults who are able to stay curious and want to learn new things may be able to offset or even prevent Alzheimer’s disease (even though the study didn’t explicitly look at data to support this conclusion). But those who aren’t interested in learning new things may be at risk for dementia.
This conclusion isn’t groundbreaking, by the way: Other studies suggest that older adults who are highly curious have better long-term memory retention than their less-curious counterparts.
Why is curiosity protective for your brain?
There are a few things going on that make your curiosity protective to your brain health. “New interests develop robust connections in the brain,” says Amit Sachdev, MD, MS, medical director in the Department of Neurology at Michigan State University. “This network of connections is what builds a more resilient brain.”
Doing the same thing repeatedly also gets old, points out Clifford Segil, DO, a neurologist at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, CA. “As we age, trying to avoid this repetition is healthy,” he says. “Reading a new book is likely better for your brain than reading an old book again.”
Ultimately, Dr. Segil says that seeking out new things “may create new brain pathways rather than strengthening old pathways.”
How can I utilize this in my life?
Dr. Segil recommends that you try to touch on your five senses (vision, hearing, touch, smell, and taste) while experiencing new things.
That means eating new foods, looking at new art, and going to a concert and hearing something different, he says.
What are some other ways I can boost brain health and prevent dementia?
A lot of the scientific findings on this topic have similar conclusions when it comes to supporting good brain health:
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Don’t smoke.
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Do moderate to vigorous exercise for at least 150 minutes a week.
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Limit how much alcohol you have.
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Try to do brain-stimulating activities, like reading, playing games, and visiting museums, regularly.
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Eat a healthy, varied diet, like the MIND diet.
Oh, and of course, stay curious. You never know where it can lead you—and your mind.
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