Cracking the dementia code with Sudoku

By: Ellie Hogg

6,8,7,1,2,5,4,9,3. After a painstaking five minutes of cross-referencing and erasing, I finally
successfully fill in the top line my sudoku puzzle. Its hard --Im the first one to admit that Im
not a math person-- but its also satisfying to finally fill in the last square and feel a sense of
triumph at cracking the code. And Im not the only one playing.
According to a CNNMoney, More than 140 newspapers worldwide now feature his Sudoku
puzzles, including the New York Post, Washington Post and Chicago Sun Times. Sudoku rose to
mass popularity around the time that piece was written in 2005, and has continued to be a
favorite pass time both electronically and on paper.
For those who have never tried their hand at the game before, as Laura Talman explains in her
piece Taking Sudoku Seriously, the game consists of a 9X9 matrix of integers with the
property that in every row, in every column, and in every one of nine 3X3 'blocks,' each of the
integers from 1 to 9 appears exactly once."
Sudoku is not just a fun way to pass the time while you sip your morning coffee, though. There is
growing evidence to suggest that Sudoku, like many games that cause players to flex their brain
muscles, may help in the prevention of Dementia.
Dementia is a neurodegenerative disorder. One of the primary causes is old age, so it usually
occurs, say, 60s onward, [but] it will often progress in the brain for several years before the
symptoms actually appear in everyday actions and life, explains Ruthann Froberg, a Junior at
Emory & Henry College who is researching Dementia for her undergraduate thesis.
In the simplest of terms, Dementia occurs when neurons in the brain begin to die and lose the
ability to communicate with one another, leading primarily to memory loss but also to changes in
mood and personality. Thus far, there is no known cure for Dementia, and because of this, the
key to solving the problem lies in early prevention, rather than retroactive treatment of already
lost neurons in the brain.
There is no known cure for dementia, explains Froberg, There are a lot of studies out there
that have drawn conclusions about ways to prevent dementia, but nothing is conclusive, but it
seems that living a healthy lifestyle will be helpful toward that.
The key to preventing dementia is growing and maintaining new and healthy neurons in the
brain, and this is made easier by living a healthy lifestyle. One aspect of living this healthy
lifestyle is frequent mental exercise. Froberg cites continuing to challenge your brain
throughout life as a method for maintaining healthy neurons.

One study recently done in Finland tracked the lifestyles of over a thousand senior citizens who
were instructed to follow a regimen that involved, among healthy eating and regular exercise,
frequent brain training, involving various games such as sudoku that ensure the seniors were
regularly challenging themselves mentally.
According to an article written about the study in The Guardian, Sudoku puzzles and
crosswords will... help stimulate the brain, as do computer games, reading books and even
learning a new language.
What all of these brain games and activities like sudoku have in common is that they are
challenging. For me, Sudoku is hard, and it involved a lot of mistake-making. But as it turns out,
making mistakes can actually be beneficial to neuron growth and maintenance, which is the key
to preventing dementia.
As Stanford mathematics professor Jo Boalor writes, When we make a mistake, synapses fire. A
synapse is an electrical signal that moves between parts of the brain when learning occurs.
The studies that Boalor cites have been done in relation to teaching young children, but the
research has the same impact for adults: challenge leads to growth and healthy neurons. So when
Im painstakingly erasing my errors on my own Sudoku board, Im actually getting more out of
the experience when it is harder for me to fit in the right number than when it comes easily.
I am only twenty years-old, though. My preventative measures for dementia are a little too early
to help me out very much, and by the time I begin to run the risk for dementia- in forty years at
the earliest- perhaps medical science will have progressed far enough to find a full cure to repair
the lost neurons that so frequently fall victim to dementia today.
Dr Simon Ridley, who serves as the head of research at Alzheimers Research UK, said of that
Finnish study that We know that dementia is caused by a complex mixture of age combined
with genetic and lifestyle risk factors. Further studies like this will be vital to help us unpick the
best approaches to maintaining brain health as we age and potentially helping to reduce the
burden of dementia in society. It will also be important to think about how we could promote and
sustain these kinds of interventions across the population as a whole.
Major progress is being made in preventing and aiding the progression of dementia, and it could
start with simply picking up a pencil and challenging yourself to game like Sudoku, eating a
balanced meal, and seeking regular exercise. It all begins with a challenge.

Sudoku board. Wikipedia.org.