Internet surfing good for baby boomer, senior brains

Baby boomers and seniors who surf the Internet had better brain activity than those who didn't use it, a new study reports.

Adults age 55 to 78 years old had more stimulation of decision-making and complex reasoning areas of the brain than older adults who rarely used the Internet or didn't use it at all.

The study, conducted at the University of California at Los Angeles, also found that reading didn't stimulate as much brain activity as Internet searching.

Half of the 24 adults studied had experience searching the web from once a day to many times a day. The other half reported using the Internet never to once a month.

The more experience a person had in searching the Internet, the greater it engaged his or her brain, the study found.

See the article, "Surfing the Web Stimulates Older Brains: Web-Savvy Baby Boomers, Seniors Plumb More Regions of the Brain During Internet Searches," on WebMed.

Copyright 2008, Rita R. Robison, Consumer Specialist