With increasing age, mental performance decreases, because the brain is also subject to aging processes. This development is accelerated by cardiovascular diseases, metabolic disorders and neurodegenerative diseases. Affected by this are attention, memory and intelligence. When it comes to intelligence, a distinction is made between the:
- Crystalline intelligence – this refers to knowledge acquired through culture and education (for example, historical facts), linguistic knowledge and understanding, and the formation of analogies between the acquired elements of knowledge.
- Fluid intelligence – ability to solve novel problems, pattern recognition, as well as abstract thinking.
Crystalline intelligence can be maintained or increased until old age through mental activity. Only from about the 65th year of life, a decline takes place.The fluid intelligence reaches its peak approximately from the 20th year of life and then begins to decline continuously. Other changes include:
- The speed of information processing decreases.
- Thinking itself becomes slower.
- The performance of working memory decreases.
- Source memory, which stores the context of memories, also decreases.
While short-term memory (information is stored here between 20 and 30 seconds) declines only slightly until the 8th decade of life, especially the episodic part (storage of personal experiences and experiences) of long-term memory declines from middle age. The semantic part of long-term memory (responsible for storage of general facts and world knowledge – e.g., federal capital of Austria) also decreases with age, but remains constant or increases when the information is autobiographical. Autobiographical information is that which plays an authoritative role in the person’s biography. Declines also take place with age in the non-declarative (implicit) part of long-term memory, which concerns the subconscious recall of emotional and behavioral patterns and procedures (e.g., riding a bicycle). Likewise, changes occur in the hippocampus – where age-related volume loss takes place. It is the hippocampus that transfers knowledge absorbed during daytime sleep to long-term memory. Characteristics of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) are:
- Difficulty in completing complex tasks
- Problems of episodic memory: facts and events that either belong to one’s biography or make up what is known as a person’s knowledge of the world
- Problems with appointments
- Word finding problems
- Everyday functions not or only minimally (in complex actions) impaired
Patients can counter these changes through cognitive training.The brain is like a muscle that can be trained. Neuroplasticity enables learning programs. Cognitive training programs relate to basic functions that support cognition:
- Attention
- Retention and memory (semantic and episodic memory).
- Visual-spatial perception
- Executive functions (used to control thoughts, feelings and behaviors).
Indications (areas of application)
- Mild cognitive impairment
- Dementia (to slow the progression as much as possible).
- Brain disorders in old age
- Children with attention deficit disorder and/or hyperactivity (ADD/ADHD).
- Children and adults with autism spectrum disorder.
- Rehabilitation of brain disorders.
Training programs that combine cognitive tasks and fine motor demands have been found to be particularly effective. Furthermore, the training should be related to everyday life. It should be adapted to the mental capacities of the patient, but in no case underchallenge him. Untargeted “brain jogging” and mere repetition tend to be ineffective. If the following conditions are met, cognitive training can preserve a large number of mental abilities or train them in the course of the aging process. Among other things, this concerns the ability to pay attention. Mindfulness exercises help people to become more aware of their surroundings and to pay more attention.Cognitive training can have the greatest influence on working memory at the memory level. This positive effect only exists in the long term if the cognitive training is carried out permanently. This effect also exists in patients with mild cognitive impairment. Working memory is part of long-term memory, which stores information temporarily and at the same time is capable of deliberately manipulating it in a targeted manner. This ability to manipulate or modulate personal knowledge enables the creation of a differentiated plan based on life experiences, the solving of complex situations and learning strategies. Psychologists published a study in the journal “Journal of Cognitive Enhancement”, which showed that targeted training of memory tasks for working memory has a positive effect on the processing of new tasks, especially when these are similar to the training tasks. This resulted in the training group not only improving their performance in the training tasks, but even in untrained transfer tasks. Author Strobach summarizes “For the investigated areas of working memory and the chosen tasks, we were able to systematically show with our study that training cognitive tasks has a positive effect on performance in similar, but also some dissimilar tasks.”
The tasks set during cognitive training should be set in a time-constrained setting. Thus, they positively affect speed of information processing. They should also stimulate creativity (e.g. creating a formula or working out an alternative concept of life). As a result, the subject has to think outside the usual channels and increases his cognitive flexibility. The ability to think creatively cognitively is also enhanced in those tasks where pattern recognition is involved. Mental fitness also depends on health behaviors such as smoking, alcohol consumption, diet, physical fitness, body weight, and mental balance. Moderate aerobic exercise can improve brain performance in older adults after only 6 months. Improvements were seen in executive function, which includes mental flexibility and self-correction, by 5.7% and language skills by 2.4%.
