You know that moment when you walk into a room and completely forget why you went there? Or when someone you've known for years walks up to you at the grocery store and their name just... vanishes from your brain? Last week, I spent ten minutes searching for my reading glasses while they were sitting on top of my head. My first thought wasn't "oh, silly me." It was "Is this how it starts?"
They think in terms of birthdays, knowing that the more candles on the cake, the more we should anticipate things like joint pain, lines on the face and even foggy thinking. Yet the most recent research shows us that we have the story all wrong around brain health. The brain changes we associate with aging (for example, memory loss) are far more dynamic and modifiable through the choices we make each day than people realize.
The researchers assessed the quality of their sleep across five dimensions in 27,500 middle-aged and elderly people (average age 54.7 years) enrolled in the UK Biobank (a research institute conducting long-term follow-up studies of the effects of genetic predisposition and lifestyle on disease). Approximately nine years later, they scanned the participants' brains with MRI and used machine learning models to estimate their biological brain age.
Most people say they want to live to a ripe old age. But that isn't really true. What people really want is to live to a ripe, old age in good mental and physical health. Some of us actually get to live this dream. These folks are known as super-agers and they make it well into their 80s not just in decent physical shape, but also with minds at least as sharp as people 30 years younger.
Scientists at the University of Cambridge's cognition and brain sciences unit have used images of roughly 3,800 "neurotypical" brains, ranging in age from birth to 90, to pinpoint these turning points where our brains change shape to serve different functions as we grow, age, and eventually decline. Roughly speaking, ages nine, 32, 66, and 83 mark pivotal shifts in how our brains operate. "This study is the first to identify major phases of brain wiring across a human lifespan," Dr. Alexa Mousley, who led the research, said in a release.
Researchers report that people who have more muscle and a lower visceral fat to muscle ratio tend to show signs of a younger biological brain age. This conclusion comes from a study that will be presented next week at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). Visceral fat refers to the fat stored deep in the abdomen around key internal organs.
At a certain point, older folks occasionally develop a penchant for making verbal slurs, mental stumbles, rambling speeches, and confusing responses. They often claim that they have no memory of making those misstatements; they might not be lying. They may be experiencing the most common consequences of advanced age coupled with chronic obesity due to a poor diet. Mind-wandering, confusion, and a reduced ability to organize and focus thoughts are classic early symptoms of dementia.
Experts are finding that the best way to understand how the brain ages is not by examining individual parts, but by studying its overall structure and how its different regions interact with one another. In a large study, researchers from Irvine, California and Tenerife, Spain, used brain scans to measure these shape changes. They discovered that as people age, the brain does not shrink evenly. Instead, it changes shape in specific ways.
Aging is a complicated thing, and no two people age in the exact same way. You might encounter someone in their seventies who seems decades older; you might also take in a jazz performance by a centenarian saxophone player. A few weeks ago, I saw Willie Nelson, still crooning and playing the guitar at the age of 92. Not everyone has the same support infrastructure as a touring musician - but that doesn't mean there aren't applicable lessons to be learned here.
"In a study of more than 50,000 brain scans, researchers found that features such as the thickness of the cerebral cortex can predict how quickly a person's ability to think and remember will decline with age."
