New research suggests that birdwatching may alter the structure and function of the brain, enhancing cognition as you age. A Canadian study of 58 adults compared the brains of expert birdwatchers with those of novices, finding that the brains of birdwatchers were denser in areas related to attention and perception.

This tissue density could mean there’s increased communication between neurons, which appears to lead to more accurate bird identification.

Birdwatching Boosts Brainpower

“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.

According to Wing, they chose to study birdwatchers because they’re observing and identifying birds, and when the brain learns a new skill, it reorganizes itself with a process called neuroplasticity. This has previously been studied in people with specialized skills, including musicians and athletes.

“[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.

Those studied included 29 people ages 24-75 recruited from organizations such as the Toronto Ornithological Club and Ontario Field Ornithologists, and 29 people ages 22 to 79 recruited from birding groups and outdoor clubs focused on hiking and gardening.

Though it’s no surprise that expert birdwatchers were more accurate in identifying both native and foreign bird species in the Toronto area, what surprised researchers was the neurological activity associated with the practice of identification.

They examined participants’ brains using two different kinds of MRI and found that expert birders showed structural brain differences. Though the results don’t suggest that birding prevents cognitive decline, it does suggest that the activity may support brain health in older adults.

In the future, researchers hope to study the brains of novice birdwatchers as they age to further support their results.

“Our interests and experiences — especially the ones that we dedicate hours, hundreds of hours or decades to — leave an imprint on brain structure,” Wing said. “We can figure out how people can use these accumulated areas of knowledge that they’ve built up to support cognition across the entire lifespan.”

The findings were published Monday in JNeurosci, the Journal of Neuroscience.