These Things Your Brain Does When You Get Old

In a study published in the journal eLife, a team of scientists from the University of Cambridge in collaboration with the University of Sussex demonstrate that the brain stimulates other areas to improve cognitive performance in older people.

The effects of aging on our brain

As we age, the brain gradually atrophies, losing nerve cells and connections, leading to a possible decline in brain function. However, this decline varies depending on the individual and it happens that some elderly people maintain better brain functions than others, without really knowing why. This lack of information on this subject was a driving force for the authors of the study. “Some people are better than others at maintaining this ability. We wondered why this was the case: are they able to recruit other areas of the brain to overcome changes in the brain that would otherwise be detrimental? asks Dr Kamen Tsvetanov, study leader and Alzheimer’s Society dementia researcher in the Department of Clinical Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge.

Brain activity analyzed using MRI analyzes

For the purposes of the study, the Cambridge team analyzed data from 223 adults aged 19 to 87 recruited by the Cambridge Center for Aging & Neuroscience. While the volunteers identified the intruder in a series of puzzles of varying difficulty, the scientists examined patterns of brain activity by measuring changes in blood flow.

In older adults, the analysis revealed that two areas of the brain showed greater activity, correlating with better performance in the task. These areas are the cuneus and a region of the frontal cortex. “Now that we’ve seen this compensation happen, we can begin to ask questions about why this happens in some older people, but not others […]”suggests Dr Ethan Knights of the Medical Research Council’s Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge.