Being an expert birdwatcher is more than a hobby. It’s a pastime that may alter the structure and function of your brain. And these changes may enhance cognition even as you age, new research suggests.In a Canadian study of 58 adults, the brains of expert birders, compared with those of novices, were more dense in areas related to attention and perception. Such tissue density may indicate increased communication between neurons, and these structural differences were associated with more accurate bird identification.The findings were published Monday in JNeurosci, the Journal of Neuroscience.AdvertisementAdvertisement“Our brains are very malleable,” said lead author Erik Wing, who during the study was a postdoctoral fellow at the Rotman Research Institute, part of the Baycrest Academy for Research and Education in Toronto.When you learn a new skill, your brain reorganizes itself in a process called neuroplasticity. Previous research has studied this phenomenon in people who’ve honed specialized skills, including athletes and musicians.Wing said his team chose to study birders because their observation and identification of birds in their natural habitats involve a unique merging of cognitive areas.“[Birding] combines fine-grain identification, visual search and attention to the immediate environment and sensitivity to motion, pattern detection, building these elaborate conceptual networks of different related species,” said Wing, now a research associate at York University in Toronto. “Also, you have to remember what you’re seeing and compare it to these internal templates,” or the images that are stored in our brains.MRIs show brain differencesThe expert group consisted of 29 people ages 24 to 75 who’d been recruited from organizations such as the Toronto Ornithological Club and Ontario Field Ornithologists. The 29 people in the novice group, ages 22 to 79, were recruited from the same birding groups, as well as outdoo …
