I believe that we'll see a lot of "x is good for your brain" news (with X just being any activity that doesn't involve a screen), now that attention spans are so short and everyone feels like their brain isn't the same anymore.
The same way we got gyms when people realized physical inactivity is super unhealthy.
A lot of, "birdwatchers" I see travelling to remote parts of Scotland and other places in the UK are generally wealthy retirees, with nice kit (Rab clothing, telephoto lenses, VW campervans).
Cognitive decline is shown to impact disproportionately on less wealthy people. So is there a trend with economic wealth and outdoor hobbies like birdwatching? I'd hazard a yes.
On a side note, the Merlin bird ID app from Cornell University is great.
For what it’s worth, this article cites a longitudinal study done by German researchers.
They basically installed a bunch of bird feeders outside nursing homes to see if watching birds improves the health of the elderly people. The researchers concluded that it did:
Nursing home staff were the first to see the difference the birds made. "For weeks, they haven't seen a smile on [a resident's] face, and then they see the smile," Kals says.
Some of the memory and concentration improvements are evident after just three to four weeks, Kals says.
It seems that they used the following bird feeder in their study:
You have quite a biased sample because most people are not going to suffer going to remote parts of Scotland to look for birds, so you are only seeing the more devoted birdwatchers.
Birdwatching can still be enjoyed in most places without needing to travel far. Birds are less active in bad weather so you don’t need expensive outdoor gear, and in many places there will be freely accessible nature reserves with hides in which one can sit in shelter to watch birds.
The highest quality glass is going to get pretty expensive (camera lenses can get to the region of $20k; binoculars $4k or so) but there are also much cheaper options and often these can be quite reasonable: you don’t need to take photos of birds; a superzoom point-and-shoot can work great; more expensive binoculars make a bigger difference in low light and if you’re young (older people’s pupils won’t dilate as much so bigger objectives at a lower magnification won’t be a huge help).
I feel like mostly you’re observing that rich people spend lots of money on their hobbies and not that opening your eyes to look at birds is some expensive exclusionary activity.
> On a side note, the Merlin bird ID app from Cornell University is great.
Do you know how it compares to iNaturalist? I'm not a birdwatcher, but I have iNat on my phone and sometimes use it to identify birds, and it seems to do a great job.
I have tried both. Merlin is best for bird watching. It does not ask to upload any data. Just start the recording, it listens and let me know what is the bird is. Done. It only uploads, IF I want it upload.
> "Her team's findings have prompted German health insurance companies – who, among others, initially funded the research project – to invest in setting up bird feeders and viewing areas in more than 400 nursing homes across Bavaria. "It was so effective, it just economised money," Kals says."
Perhaps we need to provide opportunities for less well off people to access nature? It might have a positive cost-benefit. And design care homes around gardens? 'forest bathing' is apparently often recommended in Japan based on studies of blood pressure and other physical indicators.
Munlochy: if you ever saw a geezer wearing an ex-army parka, builders safety boots with Opticron bins it might have been me. I don't get up there often enough to warrant the pricey stuff.
This feels if nothing else quite analogous with default mode network, i.e. brain regions which are task-negative (or task-neutral).
It seems that the literature supports the intuition that to meaningfully relax (i.e. exercise the brain with fewer pressures of time, success or similar, and with a relatively low information bandwidth) is really good for cognitive health. And it's very good to destress, which we can all benefit from!
So even if there are more cars than birds outside my own window... I'll make sure to spend a few more moments each day by it :)
If you haven’t seen it, Listers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl-wAqplQAo) provides a great glimpse into what competitive birdwatching looks like. It’s nothing like casual birdwatching.
I can’t recommend this documentary enough. The algorithm dropped it onto my YouTube homepage one day and I wasn’t expecting to watch more than a few minutes but I was drawn in immediately.
I don’t consider myself a birder but I’ve got into nature photography in recent years and it’s such a joy to get out for sunrise or sunset and to come home with a special shot.
I'm into ham radio which, as a hobby, skews to an older demographic. Does just having a stimulating hobby actually slow decline?
Most of the fun of ham radio is learning - it never stops, there's always something else to discover. I'd guess that it's the learning, searching, and connections you make that provide the benefits. Unless being in nature is a requirement, but then you have plenty of retirees that go RVing - do they experience the same benefits? I doubt that's as intellectually stimulating as birding or radio. Maybe.
Yes of course, anything the requires skills you don't otherwise use. In particular continuous learning is very helpful.
The challenge however is, is it that those who engage in such hobbies have decline slowed. Or are they able to engage in those hobbies due to not declining.
It's not possible to answer clearly without some randomisation and control which is basically impossible.
Still, it's reasonable inference that hobbies and work maintain cognitive capabilities.
Erik Wing, who led this research at Baycrest Academy for Research and Education in Toronto, Canada, compared MRI brain scans from bird experts to those of novices while they identified birds. He found that expert brains were wired differently in regions important for functions like attention, visual perception and visual recognition.
The study only (?) looked at the brains of birdwatchers, the paper extrapolates the study to make assertions about the brains of active subject experts in general.
"The findings don't prove whether structural brain differences are the cause or effect of birdwatching expertise."
Not a big surprise that this observation proves exactly nothing as there are thousands of other factors they could not control for (and apparently didn't want).
"Her team's findings have prompted German health insurance companies – who, among others, initially funded the research project – to invest in setting up bird feeders and viewing areas in more than 400 nursing homes across Bavaria. "
This is kind of hilarious and I would not believe that if it weren't Germany, a country that intentionally destroyed its nuclear plants capabilities in order to burn Russian gas and emit CO2. Obviously in the name of reducing CO2 emission.
I knew it! Those 30 and 40 somethings are always up to something. You never see them, never hear them, but here they are slowing their cognitive decline. They are clever little rascals. They're just like the species they're watching.
But I created a set of amazing binoculars with automatic AI age detection via radar for the small friendly price of 39.49$. Looking for a bird watcher? Get the SilentBirdWatchDectector 3000 and slow your cognitive decline at double the rate.
Don't watch the birds, watch the bird watchers instead. They may do something interesting.
look, look! A millenial father observing bird species in an effort to stave off cognitive decline, rarely seen away from his burrow and demanding offspring, we can see from its markings that this one was once a hipster, note the foliage pattern about it's left radiocarpal.
The same way we got gyms when people realized physical inactivity is super unhealthy.
A lot of, "birdwatchers" I see travelling to remote parts of Scotland and other places in the UK are generally wealthy retirees, with nice kit (Rab clothing, telephoto lenses, VW campervans).
Cognitive decline is shown to impact disproportionately on less wealthy people. So is there a trend with economic wealth and outdoor hobbies like birdwatching? I'd hazard a yes.
On a side note, the Merlin bird ID app from Cornell University is great.
They basically installed a bunch of bird feeders outside nursing homes to see if watching birds improves the health of the elderly people. The researchers concluded that it did:
It seems that they used the following bird feeder in their study:https://www.lbv.de/umweltbildung/fuer-seniorenheime/ausstatt...
Birdwatching can still be enjoyed in most places without needing to travel far. Birds are less active in bad weather so you don’t need expensive outdoor gear, and in many places there will be freely accessible nature reserves with hides in which one can sit in shelter to watch birds.
The highest quality glass is going to get pretty expensive (camera lenses can get to the region of $20k; binoculars $4k or so) but there are also much cheaper options and often these can be quite reasonable: you don’t need to take photos of birds; a superzoom point-and-shoot can work great; more expensive binoculars make a bigger difference in low light and if you’re young (older people’s pupils won’t dilate as much so bigger objectives at a lower magnification won’t be a huge help).
I feel like mostly you’re observing that rich people spend lots of money on their hobbies and not that opening your eyes to look at birds is some expensive exclusionary activity.
Do you know how it compares to iNaturalist? I'm not a birdwatcher, but I have iNat on my phone and sometimes use it to identify birds, and it seems to do a great job.
Perhaps we need to provide opportunities for less well off people to access nature? It might have a positive cost-benefit. And design care homes around gardens? 'forest bathing' is apparently often recommended in Japan based on studies of blood pressure and other physical indicators.
Munlochy: if you ever saw a geezer wearing an ex-army parka, builders safety boots with Opticron bins it might have been me. I don't get up there often enough to warrant the pricey stuff.
It seems that the literature supports the intuition that to meaningfully relax (i.e. exercise the brain with fewer pressures of time, success or similar, and with a relatively low information bandwidth) is really good for cognitive health. And it's very good to destress, which we can all benefit from!
So even if there are more cars than birds outside my own window... I'll make sure to spend a few more moments each day by it :)
I don’t consider myself a birder but I’ve got into nature photography in recent years and it’s such a joy to get out for sunrise or sunset and to come home with a special shot.
The challenge however is, is it that those who engage in such hobbies have decline slowed. Or are they able to engage in those hobbies due to not declining.
It's not possible to answer clearly without some randomisation and control which is basically impossible.
Still, it's reasonable inference that hobbies and work maintain cognitive capabilities.
Is a long leap from this article's title. Paper:
https://www.jneurosci.org/content/46/12/e1307252026
"The findings don't prove whether structural brain differences are the cause or effect of birdwatching expertise."
Not a big surprise that this observation proves exactly nothing as there are thousands of other factors they could not control for (and apparently didn't want).
"Her team's findings have prompted German health insurance companies – who, among others, initially funded the research project – to invest in setting up bird feeders and viewing areas in more than 400 nursing homes across Bavaria. "
This is kind of hilarious and I would not believe that if it weren't Germany, a country that intentionally destroyed its nuclear plants capabilities in order to burn Russian gas and emit CO2. Obviously in the name of reducing CO2 emission.
But I created a set of amazing binoculars with automatic AI age detection via radar for the small friendly price of 39.49$. Looking for a bird watcher? Get the SilentBirdWatchDectector 3000 and slow your cognitive decline at double the rate.
Don't watch the birds, watch the bird watchers instead. They may do something interesting.
(I'll see myself out...)