Puzzles, brain-training games and hobbies have long been said to stave off cognitive decline. But while some research has shown that intensive brain-training programmes done over several weeks can reduce cognitive impairment, such interventions aren’t very practical in daily life.

So my team and I decided to explore whether doing brief brain-stimulating activities could improve cognitive health. Our large-scale trial found that doing activities such as crossword puzzles, reading, listening to music, brain-training games or learning a new skill can have a significant effect on maintaining cognitive function. And, in some cases, these activities were even shown to reverse cognitive impairment.

To conduct our study, we looked at 11,500 people aged 60 to 85 with mild to severe cognitive impairment. Cognitive impairment was determined using the results of a short computerised cognitive test (the Baddeley Verbal reasoning test, which measures reading comprehension and reasoning). This test was administered at the start of the study.

Reasoning is a key domain of cognitive function that is important for many aspects of daily life – such as managing finances or doing the shopping. Not only is reasoning often used as a predictor of longer-term cognitive decline, it’s also sensitive to cognitive training.

Participants were then split........

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