Remaining Active Through Surfing…Online?

Activity, activity, activity. Remaining active keeps our cardiovascular health in tip-top shape, our physical appearance aesthetically pleasing, and our mental acuity as sharp as a tack.

Outlets for mental exercises may seem limited but they’re actually quite extensive: from doing crossword puzzles, to playing a rousing game of chess, from completing a Sudoku puzzle to surfing the web.

That’s right - surfing the web! In fact, according to a recent study in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, more activity goes on in the brain when surfing the web than when reading a book (there’s a small catch to this finding, which I’ll get into later)!

Researchers from UCLA’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior recruited 24 participants between the ages of 55 and 76, all of whom had no cognitive problems with respect to dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.

Throughout the test, the participants read a number of book passages supplied by the researchers. Meanwhile they went through a battery of brain scans that recorded the amount of activity going on in the various lobes of their brains, like the parietal lobe, temporal lobe and occipital lobe. Among many other functions, these lobes control reading and comprehension.

In addition to the reading, the participants performed a series of internet-related tasks that required clicking on various links and performing key word searches in online search engines. As with the reading tasks, brain activity was measured with fMRI scans (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging).

What the researchers found was truly surprising…at least surprising to me. The fMRIs revealed that there was a greater amount of brain stimulation throughout the brain when the participants performed online tasks than when they read book passages. With reading, there was activity in the parietal, temporal and occipital lobes; with internet surfing, there was activity in the parietal, temporal and occipital, but there was also activity in parts of the brain that deal with reasoning and decision making.

Here’s where that catch comes in: The increased neural activity was seen only among those who had prior experience with internet use. Among those who were new to internet surfing, there was no increased activity in the decision making and reasoning areas of the brain, specifically the cingulate cortex and frontal lobe. With reading, the neural activity in the brains of experienced and inexperienced internet users was virtually identical.

The researchers are confident that the internet newbies will develop greater neural activity as their net know-how increases over time.

Study after study shows that mental activity significantly reduces the risk of dementia, by as much as 50 percent, in fact (according to a 2006 Australian study published in the journal Psychological Medicine). And when you think about it, the fact that internet use stimulates more neurons in the brain makes sense: with all the icons, pictures, moving images and panoply of words that pepper our computer screens and attract our eyes.

Granted, cruising the internet is not a physical activity and is certainly no salve for the nation’s sedentary lifestyle. But we all need some relaxation, particularly if we are engaging in regular physical activity. It’s nice to know that what’s ultimately a form of relaxation is also a mental activity…and a weapon against cognitive decline.