![[This content is not available in "Englisch" yet] Prof. Dr. Lea Ellwardt](/sites/fakultaet/_processed_/d/b/csm_WISO_30.10.14_0103_Ellwardt_Webslider_8f3322383d.jpg "[This content is not available in \"Englisch\" yet] Prof. Dr. Lea Ellwardt")
Strong social involvement in high age and the embedding in social networks of relationships reduce the loss of cognitive skills and therefore the risk of dementia. Basic assumption is that contacts to other persons stimulate and train the brain, a condition to preserve cognitive skills.
Together with collegues of the VU University Amsterdam, Prof. Dr. Lea Ellwardt assumes that not just the quantity of social contacts is pivotal but also the diversity of these contacts. Diversity is high, if persons maintain contact to persons of different social circles, meaning to maintain active relationships to contacts in the circles of relatives, friends, neighbours or former colleagues. The idea is that various contacts offer diverse stimulation.
The study based on 3,107 women and men in the age of 54 till 100 who were interviewed as part of the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam (LASA). The researcher were able to show that individuals with an intense network of relationships possessed higher cognitive skills than individuals with a less intense network of relationships. The results are independent of the quantitative of social contacts or the specific kind of relationships within the social circle.
Nevertheless, an increasing variety of contacts has just a marginal effect on the reduction of cognitive skills. In the future, more research is necessary to answer the question, to what extend the network of relationships can protect against the loss of cognitive skills, respectively, to delay this loss.
More information on the Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology can be found here.