Birdwatching may reshape the brain and build its buffer against ageing

Birders have brain differences that may explain their remarkable ability to identify unfamiliar birds and suggest that bird watching may reshape the brain in the same way as learning a language or musical instrument. Such activities can strengthen cognitive reserve, the brain’s ability to defend against aging and adapt to damage.

When learning or practicing a skill, the brain reorganizes itself, strengthening and streamlining the relevant pathways. This ability, called neuroplasticity, underlies the development of expertise. This is why professional musicians show structural changes in brain regions involved in hearing, and athletes show similar adaptations in motor areas.

To understand whether birdwatching also shapes the brain, Erik Wing of York University in Canada and colleagues analyzed the structure and function of the brains of 48 birders, half expert and half novice, based on a screening test. Participants ranged in age from 22 to 79 years old and the two groups were similar in terms of gender, age and education.

During the brain scans, participants saw an image of a bird for less than 4 seconds. About 10 seconds later, they tried to identify the same bird in one of four images, each representing a different species. “All birds are really similar,” Wing says. “We intentionally chose very confusing bird species.”

The task was repeated 72 times. In total, the researchers used images of 18 bird species – six of them local and 12 not – as targets.

As expected, expert birders could identify birds better than novices. On average, they accurately identified 83 percent of local bird species and 61 percent of non-local species. In contrast, novices correctly identified 44 percent of both groups of birds.

When identifying nonlocal birds, activity in three brain regions – bilateral prefrontal cortex, bilateral intraparietal sulcus, and right occipitotemporal cortex – increased in expert birders, but not in novice birders. These regions are involved in object identification, visual processing, attention and working memory. “This speaks to the wide range of cognitive processes involved in bird watching,” says Wing.

These regions, as well as others involved in these functions, also appeared structurally more complex and organized in birders than in novices, suggesting that acquiring birding expertise reshapes the brain.

As we age, structural complexity and organization tend to decrease in the brain – a trend seen in both novice and expert birders. But the decline was less pronounced among birders, suggesting that bird watching could help develop cognitive reserve, the brain’s ability to defend against aging and adapt to damage.

“This suggests that maintaining brain activity with certain specialized abilities is also linked to a reduction in the effects of aging,” says Robert Zatorre of McGill University in Canada. “It’s an idea that’s been around for quite a long time, but it’s sort of controversial,” he says. “This paper adds further evidence in favor of the concept.”

Extensively engaging in other hobbies that rely on similar skills, such as attention, memory and sensory integration, could lead to similar brain changes, Wing says. “Bird watching engages many of these different cognitive domains, making it potentially beneficial for many types of cognition,” he says. “But there’s nothing inherent about the bird aspect. If you had another field that recruited all the same types of processes, we would expect to see comparable changes there.”

However, this study is only a snapshot in time. It could be that people who are interested in birding already have structural changes in their brains, or that other lifestyle factors that cause brain changes are more common among birders. To really know if the brain changes are due to bird watching, researchers would need to scan the brain multiple times over months or even years, Wing says.