It turns out that if you are an advanced birder, your interest and activities in birding appear to alter the structure and function of your brain in ways that may enhance cognition – the mental process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses – even as you age. According to a new research study, seasoned birders had denser tissue in parts of the brain associated to attention and perception. Such tissue density may indicate increased communication between neurons, and these structural differences were associated with more accurate bird identification.
When you learn a new skill, your brain reorganizes itself in a process called neuroplasticity. Previous research studied this phenomenon in people who have honed specialized skills, including athletes and musicians. Dr. Erik Wing explained that his team decided to study birders because their observation and identification of birds in natural habitats involves a unique merging of cognitive areas. The information in the article was published in a recent NBC Health News article that describes research published in The Journal of Neuroscience by Dr. Wing, now a research associate at York University in Toronto.
Wing explained: "Birding combines fine-grain identification, visual search, and attention to the immediate environment with sensitivity to motion, pattern detection, and building elaborate conceptual networks of different related species. Also, you have to remember what you are seeing and compare it to internal templates," or the images that are stored in our brains.
The research was based on the study of the brains of 58 adults, including 29 expert birders and 29 novice birders. The study used 2 kinds of MRI scans to study participants' brains – a Diffusion MRI scan and a Functional MRI scan.
The Diffusion MRI scan measured brain structure and showed that expert birders' brains were more dense in areas associated with processes including working memory, spatial awareness, and object recognition. The Functional MRI, on the other hand, allowed researchers to see which parts of the brain were active during a birding exercise. Among expert birders, the same areas that showed structural differences were engaged during the task, particularly when they were challenged to identify foreign birds.
"It gives us a window into how these regions of the brain might be important for developing the expertise in the first place," Wing said. "Then we can see birders actually deploy those types of skills to help them identify new, unfamiliar species of birds."
Study participants included birders aged 22 to 79, and while the research doesn't prove that birding prevents cognitive decline, the results suggest that birding may support brain health in older adults, according to Dr. Molly Mather, a clinical psychologist at Northwestern University.
Dr. Benjamin Katz, an associate professor at Virginia Tech, said other facets of birding that support brain health may also be at play. For example, birding involves being in nature, which is tied to improved attention. Birding often includes periods of walking too, which is also tied to reduced risk of cognitive impairment; and, in some cases birding includes socializing, which is tied to increased thought processing speed.
In the end, the study may suggest that continued and improving participation as a birder can help improve your mental health, especially when paired with walking in natural settings while socializing with other birders. More study is suggested by this research and associated insights, but it does emphasize that birding is good for your health in a number of ways – mentally and physically. To refer to the original NBC article, see How birding really can change the brain and boost cognition, surprising new study finds