The key to staying mentally sharp and physically fit in old age could be a brain exercise used to unmask Cold War-era spies.
In the mid-twentieth century, American officials were wary of Russian spies lurking within the government and stealing state secrets.
To unmask them, suspected spies were given a brain exercise involving color-word combinations and revealing whether Russian was their native language.
Now researchers believe a similar series of challenges, called Brain Endurance Training (BET), could be used in older adults to ward off dementia and cognitive decline.
Scientists in Britain and Spain found that seniors who participated in BET exercises performed better cognitively and physically.
Of the 24 older women tested, the BET group showed more significant progress on tasks such as walking, chair standing and arm curling, and showed improved cognitive performance on attention tasks.
In the Stroop test, participants must name the ink color of a word while ignoring the word itself, which is challenging because reading is an automatic process. Although the Cold War test would have been in Russian, the above is an English version of the exercise
BET also increased resilience to mental fatigue, helping participants perform better after demanding cognitive tasks. And the benefits remained evident at a follow-up a month later.
An example of BET is the Stroop Test, where people are shown a series of colored words that spell a different color than the color in which it is written.
Test takers are asked to name the color of the ink in which each word is written, not the word itself.
For example, the word “blue” might be written in red ink, or “yellow” might be written in purple ink.
The test taker’s job is to name the colors of the ink, not read the words, and to do so as quickly as possible.
Rumor has it that this test was used to help Americans identify spies during the Cold War.
Spies may have difficulty with response inhibition (the ability to suppress automatic responses) when they feel anxious or focused on concealing their true identity.
The words were written in Russian so that people who did not speak Russian could easily recognize the colors without being distracted by the meaning of the words.
However, those who did speak Russian took longer to respond as they automatically processed the meaning of the words, revealing their language skills and exposing them as spies.
Although they did not screen for spies, the British and Spanish researchers tested this type of cognitive processing on 24 healthy women from a local Spanish rural community, ranging in age from 65 to 78 years old.
The women were randomly assigned to one of three groups: the first group underwent BET and physical training, another group did physical training only, and a third control group did no training at all.
Researchers assessed the participants’ physical and mental health before the experiment began and checked their progress at week four, at the end of week eight, and again during a follow-up assessment four weeks afterward.
BET also increased resilience to mental fatigue among older women in a rural Spanish community, helping them perform better after demanding cognitive tasks, and the benefits remained evident at a follow-up one month later
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Researchers measured respondents’ fatigue by the number of correct answers to the Stroop test in 45 seconds.
They also measured reaction time, where participants had to respond to a visual stimulus as quickly as possible, measured in milliseconds. A faster response indicated less fatigue.
Assessments were conducted before and after the cognitive tasks to evaluate how mental fatigue affects performance.
For twelve weeks, both the BET group and the exercise-only group completed the same physical training routine, consisting of three 45-minute sessions per week for eight weeks.
Each session included 20 minutes of resistance exercises, such as squats and biceps curls, and 25 minutes of walking.
All participants took the Stroop test after their physical exertion. The key distinction was that the BET group also completed the Stroop test and the reaction time test before each training session.
As part of the Stroop test, the women were asked to name the color of the ink while ignoring the actual word, a difficult task since reading words in a fluent language is an automatic process.
When the color doesn’t match the word, the brain struggles to make sense of this conflicting information and has to prioritize one cognitive process over another, similar to when you rub your belly and stroke your head at the same time.
Seniors who took the Stroop test before exercise saw improved reaction times, performed physical tasks such as arm curls better and ran further in six minutes than the seniors who did not undergo BET training.
Researchers also showed that seniors who took the Stroop test before exercising became faster and more accurate as the experiment continued, even when they were fatigued. Their reaction times also improved with BET training.
At the midpoint, endpoint, and follow-up points of the test, the BET group consistently outperformed the exercise-only and control groups on arm curl and walking endurance.
Participants in the BET group also reported feeling less tired than the control group, especially during mid- and post-tests, suggesting that brain exercises make the body more resilient to fatigue.
The researchers said: ‘In support of our third research hypothesis, the findings demonstrate for the first time that BET is an effective countermeasure against mental fatigue and its deleterious effects on performance in older adults.’
They added that BET is recommended for older adults to improve performance and mitigate the negative effects of mental fatigue on behavior, potentially leading to better balance control and a reduced risk of potentially fatal falls and accidents.