Introducing the brain: rewiring in old age (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, October 10, 2022, 21:35 (561 days ago) @ David Turell

The brain keeps changing to accommodate different ages and usage:

https://mindmatters.ai/2022/10/the-human-brain-rewires-itself-in-middle-age/

"In a systematic review recently published in the journal Psychophysiology, researchers from Monash University in Australia swept through the scientific literature, seeking to summarize how the connectivity of the human brain changes over our lifetimes. The gathered evidence suggests that in the fifth decade of life (that is, after a person turns 40), the brain starts to undergo a radical “rewiring” that results in diverse networks becoming more integrated and connected over the ensuing decades, with accompanying effects on cognition.

"Around our mid-40s, however, that starts to change. Instead, the brain begins becoming less connected within those separate networks and more connected globally across networks. By the time we reach our 80s, the brain tends to be less regionally specialized and instead broadly connected and integrated.

In a new study published Friday in The Journal of Neuroscience, researchers imaged the brains of six super-agers who had, during their lives, taken part in ongoing research into their abilities. The super-agers sampled died at an average of 91 years old. The researchers compared those brains to those of seven cognitively average elderly people who had died after 80; six younger people who died at 49, on average; and five people who had early Alzheimer’s.

"Some of them had cells of the entorhinal cortex (a memory area) that were larger than those of people twenty to thirty years younger.surprisingly, these “super-agers” also did not accumulate as much of the “tau” protein in their neurons, considered a characteristic of Alzheimer syndrome.

"Some of this may be heredity, some an accident, or environment or lifestyle. But another recent large study points to the role of exercise in helping seniors in general retain their memories:

***

“'Everyone always asks, ‘How much should I be exercising? What’s the bare minimum to see improvement?’ ” said lead author Sarah Aghjayan, a Clinical and Biological Health Psychology PhD student in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences. “From our study, it seems like exercising about three times a week for at least four months is how much you need to reap the benefits in episodic memory.”

"Episodic memory is the kind that deals with events that happened to you in the past. It’s also one of the first to decline with age.

"But then, maybe not …

"You may also wish to read: Ever wish you had total recall? Ask people who do… Recall of every detail of one’s past works out better for some people than for others. Just why some people can recall almost everything that happened to them is a mystery in neuroscience, in part because they are few in number."

Comment: I noted the large neuron study earlier. From my own experience I 'm not surprised. I did heavy exercise until four years ago, and episodic old memories are still there. And all the studies till support my contention the brain is built to help us