Computer-assisted brain fitness seems to be one of the in-vogue topics when it comes to longevity. There is a genre of “brain fitness software” that is designed to exercise and maintain the memory and mental agility of older folks. An example is Nintendo’s Brain Age Game. I don’t think use of such software is necessary and strongly suspect that using computers day-to-day for multi-faceted intellectual work can achieve the same objectives. Some of the toughest puzzles I face personally involve diagnosing and fixing mysterious hardware and software bugs that keep cropping up in the 9 computers I maintain. This is possibly a counterpart for me of a rat having to find its way through a complex maze to get the cheese.
There is evidence that searching on Google provides great brain exercise. A recent news item reports on a study that looks at brain activity of people who search on the web using Google. The study was done at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA and used MRI techniques to monitor brain activity. The benefits of computer searching go beyond what can be achieved by reading a book. “The bottom line is, when older people read a simulated book page, we see areas of the brain activated that you’d expect, the visual cortex, and areas that control language and reading,” he said. “When they search on the Internet, they use the same areas, but there was much greater activation particularly in the front part, which controls decision-making and complex reasoning. But it was only for the people who had previous experience with the Internet.” — “Members of the technologically advanced group had more than twice the neural activation than their less experienced counterparts while searching online.” Apparently, like for other forms of exercise, systematic mental exercise leads to the most benefits.
From a personal viewpoint this is great news. I average well over 100 on-line searches a day using Google and in specialized science databases as part of my research on Anti-Aging Firewalls. And I do this day after day. Try and get your arms around longevity research and I can personally guarantee you will get ample mental exercise.
About Vince Giuliano
Being a follower, connoisseur, and interpreter of longevity research is my latest career, since 2007. I believe I am unique among the researchers and writers in the aging sciences community in one critical respect. That is, I personally practice the anti-aging interventions that I preach and that has kept me healthy, young, active and highly involved at my age, now 93. I am as productive as I was at age 45. I don’t know of anybody else active in that community in my age bracket. In particular, I have focused on the importance of controlling chronic inflammation for healthy aging, and have written a number of articles on that subject in this blog. In 2014, I created a dietary supplement to further this objective. In 2019, two family colleagues and I started up Synergy Bioherbals, a dietary supplement company that is now selling this product.
In earlier reincarnations of my career. I was Founding Dean of a graduate school and a full University Professor at the State University of New York, a senior consultant working in a variety of fields at Arthur D. Little, Inc., Chief Scientist and C00 of Mirror Systems, a software company, and an international Internet consultant. I got off the ground with one of the earliest PhD's from Harvard in a field later to become known as computer science. Because there was no academic field of computer science at the time, to get through I had to qualify myself in hard sciences, so my studies focused heavily on quantum physics. In various ways I contributed to the Computer Revolution starting in the 1950s and the Internet Revolution starting in the late 1980s. I am now engaged in doing the same for The Longevity Revolution. I have published something like 200 books and papers as well as over 430 substantive.entries in this blog, and have enjoyed various periods of notoriety. If you do a Google search on Vincent E. Giuliano, most if not all of the entries on the first few pages that come up will be ones relating to me. I have a general writings site at www.vincegiuliano.com and an extensive site of my art at www.giulianoart.com.
Please note that I have recently changed my mailbox to vegiuliano@agingsciences.com.
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