Is your doctor testing you to baseline your memory and cognition to see if negative changes are occurring?
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-02-superagers-brains-clues-sharp-memory.html
It's pretty extraordinary for people in
their 80s and 90s to keep the same sharp memory as someone several
decades younger, and now scientists are peeking into the brains of these
"superagers" to uncover their secret.
The work is the flip side of the disappointing hunt for new drugs to fight or prevent Alzheimer's disease.
Instead, "why don't we figure out what it is we might need to do to
maximize our memory?" said neuroscientist Emily Rogalski, who leads the
SuperAging study at Chicago's Northwestern University.
Parts of the brain shrink with age, one of the reasons why most
people experience a gradual slowing of at least some types of memory
late in life, even if they avoid diseases like Alzheimer's.
But it turns out that superagers' brains aren't shrinking nearly as
fast as their peers'. And autopsies of the first superagers to die
during the study show they harbor a lot more of a special kind of nerve
cell in a deep brain region that's important for attention, Rogalski
told a recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science.
These elite elders are "more than just an oddity or a rarity," said
neuroscientist Molly Wagster of the National Institute on Aging, which
helps fund the research. "There's the potential for learning an enormous
amount and applying it to the rest of us, and even to those who may be
on a trajectory for some type of neurodegenerative disease."
What
does it take to be a superager? A youthful brain in the body of someone
80 or older. Rogalski's team has given a battery of tests to more than
1,000 people who thought they'd qualify, and only about 5 percent pass.
The key memory challenge: Listen to 15 unrelated words, and a half-hour
later recall at least nine. That's the norm for 50-year-olds, but the
average 80-year-old recalls five. Some superagers remember them all.
"It doesn't mean you're any smarter," stressed superager William
"Bill" Gurolnick, who turns 87 next month and joined the study two years
ago.
Nor can he credit protective genes: Gurolnick's father developed
Alzheimer's in his 50s. He thinks his own stellar memory is bolstered by
keeping busy. He bikes, and plays tennis and water volleyball. He stays
social through regular lunches and meetings with a men's group he
co-founded.
"Absolutely that's a critical factor about keeping your wits about you," exclaimed Gurolnick, fresh off his monthly gin game.
Rogalski's superagers tend to be extroverts and report strong social
networks, but otherwise they come from all walks of life, making it hard
to find a common trait for brain health. Some went to college, some
didn't. Some have high IQs, some are average. She's studied people
who've experienced enormous trauma, including a Holocaust survivor;
fitness buffs and smokers; teetotalers and those who tout a nightly
martini.
But
deep in their brains is where she's finding compelling hints that
somehow, superagers are more resilient against the ravages of time.
Early on, brain scans showed that a superager's cortex—an outer brain
layer critical for memory and other key functions—is much thicker than
normal for their age. It looks more like the cortex of healthy 50- and
60-year-olds.
It's not clear if they were born that way. But Rogalski's team found
another possible explanation: A superager's cortex doesn't shrink as
fast. Over 18 months, average 80-somethings experienced more than twice
the rate of loss.
Another clue: Deeper in the brain, that attention region is larger in
superagers, too. And inside, autopsies showed that brain region was
packed with unusual large, spindly neurons—a special and little
understood type called von Economo neurons thought to play a role in
social processing and awareness.
The superagers had four to five times more of those neurons than the
typical octogenarian, Rogalski said—more even than the average young
adult.
The
Northwestern study isn't the only attempt at unraveling long-lasting
memory. At the University of California, Irvine, Dr. Claudia Kawas
studies the oldest-old, people 90 and above. Some have Alzheimer's. Some
have maintained excellent memory and some are in between.
About 40 percent of the oldest-old who showed no symptoms of dementia
in life nonetheless have full-fledged signs of Alzheimer's disease in
their brains at death, Kawas told the AAAS meeting.
Rogalski also found varying amounts of amyloid and tau, hallmark Alzheimer's proteins, in the brains of some superagers.
Now scientists are exploring how these people deflect damage. Maybe superagers have different pathways to brain health.
"They are living long and living well," Rogalski said. "Are there
modifiable things we can think about today, in our everyday lives" to do
the same?
Use the labels in the right column to find what you want. Or you can go thru them one by one, there are only 28,987 posts. Searching is done in the search box in upper left corner. I blog on anything to do with stroke.DO NOT DO ANYTHING SUGGESTED HERE AS I AM NOT MEDICALLY TRAINED, YOUR DOCTOR IS, LISTEN TO THEM. BUT I BET THEY DON'T KNOW HOW TO GET YOU 100% RECOVERED. I DON'T EITHER, BUT HAVE PLENTY OF QUESTIONS FOR YOUR DOCTOR TO ANSWER.
Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.
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My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.
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