grow older better

Tag: memory

  • Aging, Your Brain, and Memories

  • Brains, Memory, and Aging

    human brain

    A study on what are called “superagers” shows that not all older people lose memory as they age.

     

    This study looked at those over 80….

     

    “Then we found something even more surprising, which was even harder to believe,” she says. “In an area called the anterior cingulate of the brain, it was actually thicker in the superagers than it was in the 50-year-olds.” The anterior cingulate is a small brain region important for attention and memory.

    A youthful cortex and thicker cingulate suggest to Rogalski that these two brain regions have been spared the typical age-related shrinkage, which may be what protects against the memory decline seen in most elderly people. Superagers also have fewer risk genes for Alzheimer’s than typical 80-year-olds, she notes.

     

     I am not sure why some brains at 80 look like younger ones, but I love this kind of research!

    We need to learn much more about how to keep our bodies and brains healthier as we age!!

    Thoughts? Comments?

    thank you

     

  • Walking for brain fitness

    walking-good-for-brains

    WALK!!

    A  study found that walking isn't just great for weight loss or for just plain old exercise –

    it's great for your memory too!

    …researchers randomly assigned 120 healthy but sedentary men and women (average age mid-60s) to one of two exercise groups. One group walked around a track three times a week, building up to 40 minutes at a stretch; the other did a variety of less aerobic exercises, including yoga and resistance training with bands.

    After a year, brain scans showed that among the walkers, the hippocampus had increased in volume by about 2 percent on average; in the others, it had declined by about 1.4 percent.

    Your hippocampus is a part of the brain that is important for memory formation and normally it starts to atrophy around age 55 or 60. 

    The fact that  it actually increased is pretty amazing..

    It makes me want to go out and walk every day…

    Join me?

     

    Comments? thoughts?