A famous poet once wrote that hope is a thing with feathers. Well, new research might suggest that healthy aging is, too.
Specifically, the research examined how the expertise required to identify birds contributed to the maintenance of neuroplasticity, a key component of cognitive function that is known to decline with age.
Yet even when the “bird identification expert” – what most people call “the bird watcher” – had feathers that were too gray, these were assessed to have increased structural complexity in various regions of the brain, which could help alleviate age-related cognitive decline.
No one needs to undertake an MRI to understand that a successful birding trip leaves you terribly bloated. This is not to say that bird watching is “good” Aristotelian, but the combination of time spent in nature and leveraging a variety of cognitive systems to successfully identify a bird through limited cues and cues appears to hold great promise as a means of supporting mental faculties such as attention, visual perception, and visual recognition.
However, MRI scans were used in a recent study of bird watchers and revealed that it was precisely these faculties that showed the most activity during bird watching, particularly when the participant was unsure which bird they were observing.
The lead author of the study was the aptly named Erik Wing of the Baycrest Academy for Research and Education in Toronto, Canada. Wing’s next fancy for his paper was to study brain organization, known to decline with age and associated with compromised cognition.
The brains of some birders showed better organization than those of the novice birders who made up the control group.
The BBC’s Becca Warner delved deeper into the topic and wrote for the British network that additional research suggests birdwatching also benefits hobbyists, provided they enjoy it.
A study of 388 birders in Poland found that those who considered the hobby important in their lives experienced a greater degree of “psychological restoration” after a birding session than birders who were experts but weren’t very enthusiastic about it.
JOY TO THE RUTS:
As well as suggesting that it’s never too late to start birding, research suggests that just like feeding And exercise, someone who both values the hobby and becomes an expert receives double the benefits compared to someone who only does one.
Wing told Warner that he believes it is the curiosity of the ornithologist and bird watcher that plays the greatest role in these potential cognitive benefits, because curiosity is linked to novelty and new objects and concepts require reorganization of the brain, thus keeping the organ flexible even in old age.
“I think there are a lot of benefits to incorporating more new things into our lives, in our 40s and as we get older,” Wing said.
Send this great news to your friends who love a good birding trip…
Gn Health
