With the growth of age, vision, hearing, taste, smell, etc. Will decline, which is what we often say: "people are hard of hearing and old." These are collectively called "sensory function", that is, the ability of various sensory organs to respond to various stimuli. Science has proved that reasonable exercise can effectively alleviate the decline of sensory function of the elderly. There is no need to "slow down" when people are old.
Sensory dysfunction
Modern geriatric psychology research believes that the aging of sensory function makes it difficult for the elderly to obtain good information input, and they must sacrifice their limited cognitive resources to obtain new stimulating information, which leads to the lack of cognitive performance of the elderly, just like what we call "slow shooting". As we know, sensory function is an indicator of nerve function, and the change of sensory function will cause the change of cognitive function, which is extremely important for people's daily life. With people's life, all kinds of cognitive abilities have to go through the process of occurrence, development and decline.
An important reason why the intelligence of the elderly is not as good as that of the young is that the sensory function of the elderly is worse than that of the young.
Slow brain response
The main reason why the elderly are slow to do things and react slowly is that the brain reacts slowly. For example, after talking to an old man, he may need longer time to digest and understand. In fact, slow brain response is the basic behavioral feature of the elderly. At present, many psychological studies show that with the increase of age, the brain's reaction speed gradually slows down, which is manifested in the slow speed of searching, coding, storing and extracting all kinds of information, as well as the shallower degree of information processing and organization of the elderly, the longer the time for extracting information, and the slower the speed of establishing the relationship between old and new information.
Maintaining visual and auditory functions can delay the decline.
It is found that different noise environment and visual interference will affect the brain reaction speed of the elderly. Therefore, the elderly should choose an environment with low noise and low visual interference in their daily lives.
The results of the study bring such enlightenment:
Intervene the visual and auditory functions of the elderly, such as vision correction, or provide visual stimuli more suitable for the visual level of the elderly, such as increasing font size, increasing lighting, wearing appropriate hearing AIDS, etc. It may be one of the effective ways to help the elderly maintain their current cognitive level or delay cognitive decline.
Calligraphy can improve the brain function of the elderly.
It has been found that calligraphy can improve the brain function of autistic children, Alzheimer's disease and many other patients. The research shows that due to the comprehensive, dynamic and positive activation of perception, attention, thinking and cognitive activities in calligraphy practice, the writer is highly focused, quick-thinking, accelerated in response and enhanced in cognitive energy in the writing process.
In addition, the study also found that practicing calligraphy can activate or wake up the cerebral cortex and regulate heart rate, respiration and blood pressure. Relieve the excessive tension of the human body and increase the efficiency of psychological activities. Therefore, calligraphy, as a psychological training method, can improve the brain function of the elderly to some extent.
Therefore, provide necessary auxiliary equipment for the elderly, ensure that they can receive all kinds of external information normally, and cultivate more hobbies at the same time. I believe that when people are old, there is no need to "slow down".
Intermediate rehabilitation therapist in Department of Rehabilitation Physiotherapy, Xijing Hospital, Air Force Military Medical University, and national second-level psychological counselor.
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