Strengthening your brain may be as simple as getting out of the house to identify birds. A team of researchers recently found that the brains of skilled birders were more structurally compact in areas related to attention and perception. “The measure we used is the diffusion of water molecules in the brain,” said Erik Wing, the lead author of the study published in the Journal of Neuroscience and a researcher at Baycrest Hospital in Toronto. “One way of putting it is that there’s less constraint on where water goes in the brains of experts.” Wing and his team gleaned these findings by comparing the brains of expert birders with beginner birders of the same age and sex. The team thinks the findings may suggest developing birding skills can help people’s cognition as they age.
