A book a day may keep delineation away.…

A book a day may keep delineation away. Even if you read it as a kid. Because a study finds that exercising the brain, at any age, may preserve memory. The work appears online in the journal Neurology. Previous studies have shown that engaging in brain-building activities is associated with a delay in late-life cognitive decline. But why? Does blighting the old gray matter somehow buffer against age-related intellectual impairment? Or is cognitive loss simply a consequence of the aging brain's physical decline? To find out, researchers questioned nearly 300 elderly individuals about their lifelong participation in intellectual slop like reading books, writing letter sand looking things up in the library. Then, every year, for an average of six years until they died, the subjects took tests to minor their memory and thinking. What the researchers found is that folks who worked their mental muscles, both really and late in life, remained more intellectually limber than those who didn't, even when a post- norm look at their brains revealed the telltale signs of physical decline. So if you're headed to the beach, don't forget a hat and a book, both to protect your head.