If they exercise their intellectual and motor skills, the
elderly can limit and even reverse cognitive aging, psychologist
Louis Bherer concluded at the end of his doctoral studies
at Université de Montréal. “Pure cognitive
decline (“I am aging, therefore my memory is no good.”)
does not exist,” explains the young researcher, who
is currently pursuing postgraduate studies in the Beckman
Institute at University of Illinois. Our research demonstrates
that aging of attention is not irreversible.”
Although he won’t claim he has discovered the Fountain
of Youth, Louis Bherer does insist that exercises designed
to keep the memory and attention alert can be rejuvenating.
“When we subject a group of elderly people to tests
designed to evaluate their attention, they get results comparable
to young people if they practice enough,” he notes.
The only time they show deficiencies is when they are faced
with new tasks under pressure.”
The psychologist conducted experiments with groups of 15
to 20 people aged 65 years and over, comparing the results
with those for similar groups of subjects aged 20 to 30
years. He placed the participants in different situations
that tested their attention span. To his great surprise,
the people who showed the best memorization and attention
optimization strategies had the best results. If you teach
the subjects to adopt these strategies, they practically
reverse their cognitive decline. When they see a yellow
traffic light, drivers must decide whether to drive on or
stop. This decision, based on anticipation of a red light,
has to be almost instantaneous. While it may appear simple,
it actually brings many cognitive processes into play. The
methodology used by Louis Bherer more or less replicates
the principles involved in this kind of decision. Placed
before a computer screen, the study subjects must identify
a picture preceded by a warning sound. Their reaction time
is recorded to the nearest millisecond.
Analysis shows that, initially, the elderly subjects scored
lower than the control group subjects. The researcher tells
us that this is because the elderly, in general, “are
not well prepared for uncertain events.” However,
“a little bit of practice yields a big improvement”
in their performance, in terms of both speed of execution
and accuracy. Louis Bherer’s research was carried
out in the Montréal Geriatric Institute under the
guidance of Sylvie Belleville, Professor in the Department
of Psychology at Université de Montréal and
researcher in the Experimental Neuropsychology Research
Group. The thesis work, presented as a series of articles
to appear in scholarly magazines (three articles have been
published and three are currently under review), was named
the best thesis for the year 2001-2002 in the social sciences
by the Faculty of Graduate Studies.
Researcher: Louis Bherer
Telephone: (217) 265-5141
Email: lbherer@uiuc.edu
Funding: Canadian Institutes of Health Reseach, Beckman
Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
