Your brain is cognitively 5 years younger at this time of year.
People’s brains work faster in late summer and early fall.
Tests showed that people are cognitively almost five years younger during late summer and fall than they are in winter or spring.
The results come from research on 3,352 people in three different studies.
All completed neuropsychological testing.
The researchers found that people were more likely to meet the criteria for mild cognitive impairment in winter and spring than fall or summer.
Some of the people in the study had Alzheimer’s, and they also had lower levels of proteins and genes linked to the disease in summer and fall.
Meanwhile, winter and spring were the worst times.
The authors write:
“There may be value in increasing dementia-related clinical resources in the winter and early spring when symptoms are likely to be most pronounced.
By shedding light on the mechanisms underlying the seasonal improvement in cognition in the summer and early fall, these findings also open the door to new avenues of treatment for Alzheimer’s disease.”
The study was published in the journal PLOS Medicine (Lim et al., 2018).
