Can wiggling your pinky really stop cognitive decline?

It’s easy to see why the idea has gained attention. A free, effortless daily habit that protects against one of the most feared conditions of ageing is an appealing prospect. But while the trend draws loosely on real neuroscience, the conclusions being made are far more ambitious than the evidence allows.

Doing something fiddly and new with your fingers, such as learning new chords on a guitar, takes real concentration. Your brain has to plan each movement, hold back the wrong ones, and constantly adjust based on what you are seeing and what your fingers are feeling.

That’s a surprising amount of mental work for such a small physical task, and it may help explain why hands-on hobbies such as learning a musical instrument or knitting are associated with sharper memory and better brain function.

For years, scientists have used finger-tapping tasks, where people repeatedly tap a finger or follow a simple rhythm, to study how movement, attention and the ageing brain are connected. However, these tasks are used as research tools and should not be confused with scientific tests for dementia or memory loss.

There’s another idea behind this: the brain can rewire itself in response to what we ask it to do, building new connections as we learn. So when you learn a new finger movement, you’re encouraging your brain to strengthen and reorganise neural connections involved in that task.

In this sense, pinky time fits into a broader category of activities that challenge the brain through novelty and coordination. From juggling to dancing or learning a new language, these sorts of tasks may help keep the brain resilient as we age.

Performing unfamiliar movements can feel mentally demanding, but it does not mean it can diagnose cognitive decline or protect against it. Many factors influence how well someone performs a finger coordination task, including mobility, flexibility, previous injuries and practice. A healthy person may struggle with this movement task, while someone with cognitive impairment may perform it with ease.

Looking for easy fixes

The popularity of pinky time highlights that people are increasingly looking for simple ways to monitor and protect their brain health. Unfortunately, detecting the earliest stages of cognitive decline is considerably more complex.

Doctors and researchers use carefully developed tests that measure many aspects of cognition, including memory, attention, language and “executive functioning” (the planning, organising and self-control skills we use to perform daily tasks).

There is currently no evidence that struggling with this particular finger movement predicts early memory or thinking problems, and no strong evidence that practising it can prevent cognitive decline.

Research on various hand and finger exercises has reported modest benefits in people who already have some cognitive difficulties. But there isn’t much evidence yet, and it’s not clear whether the benefits are big enough to help protect against dementia.

Another limitation is that the brain benefits most from activities that remain difficult. As a task becomes familiar, it requires less attention and cognitive effort. A movement that feels difficult today may become largely automatic after repeated practice, reducing its value as a brain workout.

Unfortunately, there’s no single trick to keeping your brain sharp as you age. What does seem to matter is much broader – staying active, looking after your heart, getting enough sleep and keeping up your social life. There’s also growing evidence that something as simple as sorting out your hearing or eyesight can help too, because it makes it easier to stay socially and mentally switched on.

A healthy diet, particularly one resembling the Mediterranean diet, has also been linked to better brain health. Lifelong learning, whether through education, hobbies, languages, music or other mentally stimulating activities, also seems to help.

Pinky time as a coordination challenge may be fun and harmless. But its viral promise oversimplifies a much more complex picture. When it comes to protecting our brains, the evidence still favours the less glamorous fundamentals: exercise, sleep, healthy diet, social connection, good sensory health and lifelong learning.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.