Deans' stroke musings: Social Activity Tied to Integrity of Brain Structure in Older Adults

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.

What this blog is for:

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.

Saturday, October 24, 2020

Social Activity Tied to Integrity of Brain Structure in Older Adults

The responsibility is your doctors to get you recovered well enough to socialize like you did before stroke. YOUR DOCTOR'S RESPONSIBILITY!

Social Activity Tied to Integrity of Brain Structure in Older Adults

HealthDay News — For older adults, social engagement (SE) is associated with greater microstructural integrity of specific gray matter (GM) regions relevant to social cognition, which have roles in dementia, according to a study published online Oct. 19 in the Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences.

Cynthia Felix, M.D., M.P.H., from the University of Pittsburgh, and colleagues estimated associations of SE with GM microstructure in regions of interest (ROIs) relevant to social cognition in community-dwelling older adults. The associations between SE index and mean diffusivity (MD) of GM ROIs on diffusion tensor imaging were examined and adjusted for age, race, gender, and education.

The researchers observed a significant association between higher SE and lower MD (greater gray matter microstructural integrity) in the left middle frontal gyrus-orbital part, left caudate nucleus, left temporal pole-middle temporal gyrus, right middle frontal gyrus, right superior frontal gyrus-orbital part, and right middle frontal gyrus-orbital part, after adjustment for demographic attributes. The associations were robust to adjustment for hearing or difficulties in activities of daily living. For some ROIs, there was significant effect modification by gender, with associations seen for women only.

“I believe our findings are particularly important right now, since a one-size-fits-all social isolation of all older adults may place them at risk for conditions such as dementia,” Felix said in a statement. “Older adults should know it is important for their brain health that they still seek out social engagement in safe and balanced ways during the pandemic.”