These Creative Skills May Keep Your Brain Up To 7 Years ‘Younger’
From tango dancing to mastering strategy video games, creative and cognitively demanding hobbies may help keep your brain biologically younger—by as much as 4 to 7 years, according to a new study published in *Nature Communications*.
Researchers developed “brain clocks”—machine learning models trained on EEG and MEG brain scans—to estimate a person’s brain age based on patterns of neural connectivity. Just as fitness trackers compare your heart health to your actual age, these brain clocks compare your brain’s functional patterns to typical age-related changes. A brain that appears younger than your chronological age suggests healthier aging.
Analyzing data from 1,472 participants across 13 countries, the team compared experts and non-experts in four creative domains: tango dancing, musical performance, visual art, and real-time strategy gaming (specifically *StarCraft II*). Across the board, experts showed significantly younger brain ages—ranging from 4.1 years younger (gamers) to 7.1 years younger (tango dancers)—than non-experts of the same age.
Importantly, the benefits scaled with experience: more years of musical training, higher gaming rankings, or longer tango instruction all correlated with progressively younger brain patterns. These effects were centered in the frontoparietal network—a brain system critical for attention, planning, coordination, and rhythm—regions that typically decline with age.
In a controlled experiment, non-gamers who trained for 30 hours in *StarCraft II* over a few weeks showed a measurable reduction in brain age (by about 3.1 years) and improved performance on an unrelated attention task. Those who played *Hearthstone*, a less cognitively demanding game, saw no such changes. The more skilled participants became (measured by in-game actions per minute), the greater the brain age reduction.
Using graph theory and computational modeling, researchers found that creative engagement enhanced both **local efficiency** (faster communication within specialized brain circuits) and, in long-term experts, **global coupling** (better coordination across distant brain regions). This suggests that sustained creative practice doesn’t just fine-tune specific skills—it strengthens the brain’s overall architecture.
While the cross-sectional comparisons can’t prove causation (it’s possible people with healthier brains are drawn to creative pursuits), the pre-post training study provides stronger evidence that even short-term engagement can initiate beneficial changes.
The study has limitations: relatively small group sizes per domain, lack of long-term clinical outcomes (like dementia risk), and variability in EEG/MEG recording methods. Still, the consistency of results across cultures and creative forms—from Argentine tango to Polish gamers—points to a universal link between creative challenge and brain resilience.
This research expands the growing consensus that lifestyle choices powerfully influence brain aging. Unlike medical interventions, creative hobbies are accessible, enjoyable, and come with added benefits like stress relief and social connection. And yes—even video games count, as long as they demand strategy, adaptability, and focus.