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Roll over Gutenberg
Reading books helps keep you smart, right? Well, not according to a new study. In fact, you may be better off surfing the net.
The Associated Press reported recently on a four-year study conducted by the Mayo Clinic on some 2,000 over-70 adults. The authors were trying to determine whether some common mental and social activities—websurfing, making crafts, playing cards, going to movies with others and reading books— had any role to play in staving off cognitive impairment.
The findings? Those who engaged in one of those mind-stimulating activities at least once a week experienced cognitive decline at a rate that was 20 per cent lower than those who did not. So the general lesson to be taken is that being engaged in some form or other is good for brain health. Indeed, benefits can be derived from sources of stimulation that are close at hand and cheap: a simple deck of cards can be neuroprotective, with no fancy brain training games required.
(The study also found that the existence of a genetic trait linked with Alzheimer’s was a likely factor in cognitive decline; but that even among those who had the trait, stimulating activities were associated with lower rates of impairment.)
But the shocker for me was that not all of the activities that were studied had the same positive effect. The mind stimulator that had the greatest positive effect was using a computer. Three others—crafts, cards and moviegoing—were in positive territory. But the stimulator that had little or no positive effect was reading books. That’s right: reading books! It’s all enough to make Johannes Gutenberg roll over in his grave.
This observation makes very little sense to me. Do the results of this study mean that my Uncle Fred’s weekly cribbage game with his pals stands him in better stead to retain his mental sharpness than my struggling through the latest Margaret Atwood novel? Or that I would have better employed my time making macramé projects than in consulting the Oxford English Dictionary? What is a ‘computer’ anyway? Does it include an e-reader? Would I preserve my brain better if I read War and Peace (downloaded for free) on a smartphone than if I curled up in my chair and read the printed book?
I don’t want to sound like I am throwing cold water on the study, but the article doesn’t specify how high the reading quality threshold was. Perhaps a good number of those 2,000 people in the study who read books as their potential stimulant must have been reading comic books or especially lurid Regency romances instead of more challenging fare.
The study results suggest a host of negative consequences. If our children ever found out about this, they would refuse point blank to study books—and they would snatch them from our hands just as though they were tobacco or alcohol. And if I can’t justify busying myself reading a book, what is to prevent me from getting up off my duff and helping out with the dishes? Indeed, if gluing together popsicle sticks is neuroprotective, surely a case can be made that vacuuming the floors is as well—in which case I am left with no excuse but to pitch in and help, unless I can argue that the issue deserves further research. Moreover, if reading does not prevent mental decline, surely watching television must be even worse. Am I supposed to give up television as well?
Reading has always given me a lot of pleasure— whether in order to escape, imagine or learn. I’ll be darned if I am going to give it up for the sake of preserving my faculties. Besides, the study didn’t say reading was bad for me: it just said it wasn’t associated with a slowing of cognitive decline. It’s not as though I like to spend my time bronco busting, which can lead to instant cognitive decline. If necessary, and so as I can earn the right to read a book, I’ll promise to sharpen the saw by taking my wife to the movies once a week. The Regent had Manchester by the Sea on last week and is showing La La Land this week, so I’ve already earned the right to read two books—and to watch the Academy Awards on television.
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