THERE’S no way to get around it, human beings are social creatures. Although going underground and disconnecting the telephone may seem like a great idea sometimes, it’s not going to be of any particular benefit to your brain function. However, going out and socialising is not only a great way to have fun but will also give your brain a workout.

As it turns out, a 10-minute chat can give you comparable brain activity to doing a Sudoku puzzle, while sitting in front of the idiot box will, well, there’s a reason it’s called the idiot box.

Just by talking with people, you engage your frontal lobe as that particular part of the brain controls your attention span, emotions, social behaviour and expressive language.

If you wanted to break it down further, Broca’s area in the frontal lobe helps put language into a logical order.

The temporal lobe controls your receptive language and your language comprehension. Wernicke’s area is where language is understood. Damage to this area will result in you not understanding a word that is said to you.

Finally, we have to engage our motor cortex to contort our tongue, mouth and facial muscles to produce the speech.

All that, in just a short chat with friends.

Dr Jenny Brockis, author of forthcoming book, Brain Fit! Twenty Top Tips to Boost Your Thinking and Memory skills, says while we understand quite a bit about how the brain operates in speech, there is still much to learn.

“Neuroscience has still to yet fully understand how we form language and speak to each other. When we talk, we involve a number of different areas of our brain,” she said.

Dr Brockis says that not only are we engaging our speech centres when we have an animated discussion with friends, but we’re also reading body language and using our own.

“When we listen to someone talk we are not only hearing the words they use, we also use visual cues of their body language, actions and gestures. We add to our interpretation of what we hear that person say, from these other sources,” she said.

So it’s obvious that by the simple act of talking, we are engaging many parts of the brain. Not engaging those parts of the brain can lead to mental atrophy. The old phrase “use it or lose it” applies here.

In fact, it’s been suggested that living alone can lead to an increased chance of Alzheimer’s in middle age.

In 2009, a study was undertaken in Finland and Sweden, which concluded that “living in a relationship with a partner might imply cognitive and social challenges that have a protective effect against cognitive impairment later in life”.

These “cognitive and social challenges” are good for your brain. Being in constant contact with people provides a cognitive challenge as you engage the frontal lobe and temporal lobe every day.

Studies into the causes of dementia, in particular Alzheimer’s, has taken on extra importance during the past five years, with forecasts that the number of people who will develop dementia is set to skyrocket.

A research report released in 2009 by Access Economics shows that about 245,000 people are affected by the disease with estimates showing this number could quadruple by 2050.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates that there could be 2.4-3.7 million people living alone in 2020, a fair chunk of which would be older females, as male partners more often than not die before their spouses.

The two facts could be coincidental, but getting out and about can help keep your mind sharp well into old age.

Be aware that talking to the same people over and over again will have your brain falling into familiar patterns, therefore not providing the best brain workout.

Dr Brokis recommends getting out there and meeting new people. You may be scared or nervous to meet new people, but that’s the point.

“When we are stressed in social situations it is more difficult to hang onto the thread of a conversation, and we may miss cues of when it is an appropriate time to interact with our own talk,” she said.

“Our brain is constantly rewiring, forming new neural circuits and pathways, and adapting to our everyday experiences. This allows us to continue to learn and helps keep our brain robust.”

Social engagement can have short-term benefits as well. A 2007 study undertaken by
Professor Oscar Ybarra and his colleagues measured the short-term cognitive effects of social interaction, social isolation and undertaking intellectual study.

Using a sample size of 3600 people aged 24-65, they broke the sample group into three key groups.

The first group was engaged in social interaction for 10 minutes, the second group was given a Sudoku puzzle to do for 10 minutes and the final group was put through the intellectual “rigour” of watching the TV program Seinfeld for 10 minutes.

After this, the three groups were given identical tests which measured the speed processing of the subjects.

Although the group who had done puzzles came out on top, the group who had spent their time socialising had comparable results, with those who spent their time watching Seinfeld coming in a distant third.

All in all, while staying at home and reading Dostoyevsky or playing chess against the computer will give your brain one heck of a workout, it’s going to be infinitely more fun to get out of the house and have a chat.

Send to Friend

Printable Version