What is your favorite board game?
These are my board games! I also have a monopoly, but I think the table is too small to fit them all.
I love board games night with my friends. I love to hang out with my friends through play, while building and bettering our relationships. I and my friends love to play the board games that kicks you brain: Blokus ®, Poker, Hasbro Monopoly Deal ®, and Sequence ®. Yes, we love games.
Ultimately, I feel it is important to do my homework (or strategies search) before these nights. Yes, the board game nights are challenging and fun. I also seriously hope it keeps me away from dementia!
I think that may be true because of cognitive reserve hypothesis.
The cognitive reserve hypothesis states that doing mentally challenging activity, such as playing board games and reading, can increase the connections in our brains. Through doing these activities on a daily basis, there will be so much connections made in our brain that even when the bad proteins, called plauqes and tangles, destroyed the connections, there will still be plenty healthy connections in our brains to keep us smart.
To find out whether playing board games can make me smarter, I read a study titled: Playing board games, Cognitive Decline and Dementia: A French population-based cohort study by Dartigues et al, published in the British Medical Journal in 2013.
In this study, the French researchers observed the lives of the French board game players and non-players. Within 3 years of the study, the researchers discovered that board game players are significantly less likely to have dementia than the non-players do (Fabrigoule et al, 1995). To their excitement, the French researchers decided to broaden their observation time to 20 years, which is about 7 times more than their original study. Then, they found an ugly reality: The board game players are as likely as the non-players to have dementia. Nevertheless, these French researchers also find a surprising fact: The board game players are still a lot smarter than the non-players. In other words, the players have milder dementia than the non-players.
So why?
The French researchers think that playing board games might give the players more cognitive reserve, or more nerve connections in their brain. As a result, within 3 years of the observation, the brains of the players are still working far better than the non-players. However, within 20 years, all players and non-players experienced disrupted connections in their brains. Yet, the players experienced less effect from the disruptions because they already have so much more nerve connections in their brain than the non-players. Therefore, the players appeared a lot smarter than the non-players.
However, it is always good to take what the researchers said with a grain of salt: The method of the research cannot show a direct cause and relationship because the researchers only observed their players and the non-players. The researchers did not tell their participants to play board games, or restrict them from playing board games, and see whether they have dementia.
So yup. I was a little sad knowing that even though I play board games, I may still have dementia.
However, this fact is not going to keep me away from playing.
I love to keep myself busy because occupational therapy is grounded in the belief that busy is an indicator of a healthy life.
Plus.
I love playing board games because through playing the games, I can meet my friends, and make new friends.
Well, hopefully, I can see them again this weekend! Getting pumped!!
Reference:
Dartigues, J. F., Foubert-Samier, A., Goff, M. L., Viltard, M., Amieva, H., Orgogozo, J. M., . . .
Helmer, C. (2013). Playing board games, cognitive decline and dementia: a French
population-based cohort study. BMJ Open,3(8). doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2013-002998
Fabrigoule C, Letenneur L, Dartigues, et al. Social and leisure activities and risk of
dementia: a prospective longitudinal study. J Am Geriatr Soc 1995;43:485–90.
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