By Pesach Benson • September 8, 2026
Jerusalem, 8 September, 2026 (TPS-IL) — A sense of usefulness to others may help protect the aging brain, according to a New Israeli study, with researchers suggesting that feeling needed could matter as much as simply staying active.
The study, by a team of researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and Safed Academic College, points to a low-cost, scalable way to support cognitive health in later life by giving older adults roles — as mentors, advisors, or community leaders — where their contributions are seen as essential.
“Our research shows that a sense of usefulness and necessity to the environment can constitute an accessible and significant compensatory mechanism. To maintain the brain health of the older population, it is not enough to fill their days with activities, but we must create meaning for them by integrating them into social and interpersonal roles in which they feel their voice is heard and their skills are needed,” said Prof. Ella Kuhn-Schwartz, who heads the master’s program in gerontology at Ben-Gurion University. She co-led the research with Prof. Rabia Khalila, vice president of Safed Academic College.
The team surveyed 476 adults aged 50 and older in Israel, drawing on data from the Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. Participants were asked how much they felt they contributed to the wellbeing of family, friends and their broader community, whether through time, money or advice. They then completed cognitive tasks, including recalling lists of words and solving arithmetic problems.
The analysis found a strong link between a sense of worth and cognitive performance, with feelings of usefulness accounting for roughly a third of the variation in test results. Notably, the effect was strongest among people with what researchers call low cognitive reserve — those with less formal education and limited social engagement over their lifetimes. Rather than simply adding a small boost for people who already had advantages, a sense of usefulness appeared to partly offset differences associated with lower cognitive reserve.
The Power of Purpose
Kuhn-Schwartz said cognitive reserve is typically built up over decades through schooling, work and mental challenges, resources not everyone has equal access to. She said the findings point to feeling needed as an accessible form of compensation for lower cognitive reserve. She added that simply keeping older adults occupied is not enough. What matters, she suggested, is giving them roles where their opinions and abilities are genuinely valued.
According to Khalila, two people doing the identical activity could see different cognitive effects depending on whether they felt their contribution actually mattered.
“It is not only the mere participation in an activity, such as volunteering, that protects the brain, but the subjective experience and the meaning that the person attributes to their contribution,” he explained.
The study also traced a possible pathway linking usefulness to cognitive health: participants who felt more significant to those around them reported fewer depressive symptoms, and that reduction in depression appeared to explain part of the link to better cognitive scores. Depression is already recognized as a factor that can speed cognitive decline, so the researchers suggest that a sense of purpose may be associated with better cognitive performance partly through lower levels of depression, rather than simply by keeping the mind engaged.
Because a sense of worth can be cultivated later in life, unlike education, the authors recommend that policymakers and welfare organizations consider programs that give older adults concrete social roles, such as intergenerational mentoring, community counseling and informal leadership positions.
The researchers also pushed back on the common framing of older adults as primarily recipients of care, arguing their findings suggest that they can also play meaningful roles as contributors to their families and communities.
The study was published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Applied Gerontology.
