Brain Fitness On the Rise

The general health of older men and women is improving – thanks in large part to anti-aging approaches that help to extend the healthspan.  Jocelyne de Rotrou, from Hopital Broca (France), and colleagues assessed the thinking and memory skills of 204 elderly French men and women selected from the memory clinic of a Paris hospital between 1991 and 1997. They compared their test scores to those from 177 similar people tested at the same clinic in 2008 and 2009.  None of the participants had dementia at the time. Participants less than 80 years of age performed better on the cognitive tests than older participants during both study periods. Interestingly, the researchers found that the 2000s group as a whole also did better than the 1990s group. Participants tested more recently scored higher on the testing, with the differences consistent across almost every component of the tests. Writing that: “This study showed a significant increase of cognitive scores over time,” the study authors submit that: “contemporary octogenarians in the later sample performed like septuagenarians in the former sample. These findings might be consistent with the increase in life expectancy and life span in good health.”