Brain exercises pay off

In an indication that the brain like the body needs exercise in old age, researchers report that older people given training in mental functions stayed sharper for years afterward.

The training involved formal sessions using such things as mnemonics that teach people to remember by using acronyms and rhymes. But it is reasonable to infer that games such as Sudoku that emphasize reasoning skills could have some of the same benefits, said Michael Marsiske of the University of Florida, one of the authors of the study.

Because the training lasted only 10 to 18 hours, “imagine if you could do something like Sudoku where people practice these skills every day,” he said in an interview.

The study, published in the Dec. 20 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Assn., involved more than 2,800 people with an average age of 73 who were living independently in several U.S. cities. It ran from 1998 through 2004.

Some of those in the study were given the formal training in memory, reasoning and speed of processing plus booster sessions in ensuing years and others got no training.

After five years all trained participants reported less difficulty compared with the untrained group in performing important activities of daily living, the study said.