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Sudoku, crosswords and handheld games not only offer amusement but also keep the mind sharp, and are becoming more popular among older people, according to Gary Small, director of the UCLA Center on Aging.

Mental exercises such as those games can help fight the effects of aging on the brain, he said.

“Forgetfulness is a result of normal aging. It’s part of a natural process. ... Cognitive exercises can help you improve the function of your brain and make you feel better,” said Dr. Gal Bitan, assistant professor of neurology at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine.

Small said that for some people, two-thirds of what determines their health as they age might be in their own power.

“There is a lot we can do to take control of our future health,” he added.

Small conducted a study showing that after two weeks on a program of healthful food, daily walks, relaxation techniques and mental exercises, participants improved their memories significantly.

“We looked at their brain scans and saw dramatic improvement in their efficiency. They did more, performed better, and used less brain energy,” Small said.

The entire brain is affected by aging, Bitan said. Some of the effects of aging include the overall mass of the organ shrinking, synapses firing more slowly, and cell death.

“(People who are not affected by Alzheimer’s) can definitely improve their memory function with these exercises, but there hasn’t been solid proof of correlation between cognitive exercises and delay or improvement of the condition of Alzheimer’s,” Bitan said.

Alzheimer’s disease, which is associated with aging, primarily strikes the hippocampus and the cortex and affects the conversion of short-term memory into long-term memory, he said.

Bitan compared Alzheimer’s to entering data into a word processor without saving. Once the program is closed, the data is lost because it was not saved to the hard drive.

“(Alzheimer’s) is not necessarily related to normal aging,” he said.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, Alzheimer’s disease affects an estimated 4.5 million Americans and, among people age 65 and older, is the most common cause of dementia, which is the deterioration of the brain’s cognitive faculties.

“In normal aging, there is a slow and incremental deterioration in overall brain function, but some people live over 100 with very little loss of mental capacity,” Bitan said.

There is a belief that the more one exercises the brain, the longer it would take for Alzheimer’s to deteriorate the brain, but Bitan said this has not been proven.

Though researchers are aware of the causes of Alzheimer’s disease, there is currently no cure, only drugs to temporarily treat the symptoms rather than the cause of the disease.

But technological innovations, such as a new scanner which can show physical evidence of Alzheimer’s, offer the possibility of learning more about structural and chemical abnormalities in the brain.