Leisure activities link to cognitive resilience by gender
In 3,293 older Chinese adults followed from 2011 to 2020, mental activities linked to cognitive resilience in both genders, but social links were concentrated in men.
Dose-response
Limit: Measurement of social activities did not capture their specific content or context
Edited by Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News
Researchers tracked 3,293 Chinese adults aged 60 and older across five waves of an observational cohort study between 2011 and 2020. They analyzed 7,130 total observations to see how the breadth of leisure activities related to cognitive resilience. The team estimated cognitive resilience as overall thinking ability beyond what was expected for a person's age, education, gender, residence, and chronic disease burden.
A wider variety of cognitive activities was linked to higher cognitive resilience similarly in both men and women. For social activities, the link peaked at approximately three activity types. In models split by gender, this social link was concentrated in men and was not significant in women, despite higher social participation rates among women. Analyses of earlier activities supported that activity engagement preceded resilience.
Why it matters
In older adults, cognitive resilience helps sustain thinking skills in the face of age-related brain changes and disease. Identifying how leisure activities link to this resilience can help clarify how everyday lifestyle habits relate to healthy cognitive aging across genders.
Caveats
As an observational study, the analysis shows associations rather than cause and effect, and the results may not apply outside Chinese adults aged 60 and older. The study also used a mathematical estimate for cognitive resilience and did not measure the specific content or context of the social activities.
The paper
Tsinghua University; Beijing Tsinghua Chang Gung Hospital
NPJ Aging, Oct 27, 2026, Open access, CC BY-NC-ND
