brain-aging
23 stories tagged "brain-aging"
The Omega-3 Trial Headlined as a Brain-Health Bust Was Built to Measure Spinal Fluid
Two years of high-dose DHA reached the spinal fluid of older adults exactly as planned. The memory scores behind the "no benefit" headlines were an exploratory outcome, and 38 percent of volunteers dropped out.
Brain & AgingYour Aging Brain May Be Swapping Details for Wisdom. Nobody Has Measured the Wisdom.
Three neuroscientists argue that midlife forgetting is the brain shifting toward meaning. Older studies document the lost detail and the confident false memories that come with it. The promised wisdom has never been measured.
Brain & AgingThe Amino Acid That Sharpened Old Mice's Memory Made Neuron Loss Worse in Alzheimer's Mice
D-serine improved memory in old mice in a 2023 study now recirculating as news. Given to Alzheimer's model mice, the same amino acid made neuron loss worse, and the human trial behind the hype was a single dose.
Brain & AgingThe MIND Diet's '2.5 Younger Brain-Years' Meet the Trial That Couldn't Find Them
Framingham brain scans linked closer MIND-diet adherence to grey matter aging about 2.5 years slower. A 604-person randomized trial that put older adults on the diet for three years found no edge over a control diet.
Brain & AgingIn Aging Brains, Thicker Myelin Showed Up Where Thinking Fell Fastest
In brain tissue from a subset of 866 Scots tested from age 70 to 82, the fastest decliners had smaller nerve fibers, thicker myelin and fewer myelin-making cells carrying the stress protein NRF2.
Brain & AgingD-Serine Helped Old Mice in the Maze and Did Nothing for Their Skin or Bones
Restoring the protein menin in one patch of hypothalamus gave 20-month-old mice thicker skin, more bone and better learning. D-serine, the amino acid now in the headline, improved only the learning, and the one trial in healthy older adults that both news stories cite gave each person a single dose
Brain & AgingUSC Scanned 459 Aging Brains Across India. The Wiring Just Under the Cortex, Not the Gray Matter, Tracked Who Stayed Sharp.
In 459 older adults across India, healthier short-range wiring just beneath the cortex was tied to a weaker link between gray matter loss and cognition, and the tie was strongest in people with the least schooling.
Brain & AgingThe Sea Squirt That Reverses Aging Is a Mouse Study From 2022. The Capsules Are Already on Amazon.
The mice got 300 milligrams per kilogram by feeding tube, five days a week, for two months. The human trials used about a milligram a day, most were funded by the companies selling the capsules, and the largest could not beat placebo.
Brain & AgingA Salsa Class, a Grocery List, and 38 Check-Ins Beat Health Advice on Memory by 55%
Across 11 Latin American countries, a coached program of exercise, an adapted MIND diet, and cognitive training improved older adults' thinking 55 percent more than periodic health advice, with no infusion chair and no $26,500-a-year drug.
Brain & AgingDirty Air Is Linked to 16 Percent More Inflammation in Your Blood. Does That Damage Reach Your Brain?
Each step up in long-term fine-particle exposure is tied to nearly 16 percent higher inflammation in older adults' blood, and a CHARLS analysis asks whether that same signal is what wears down the aging brain.
Brain & AgingChronic Money Trouble Showed Up on the Brain Scans, Decades Later
In a British cohort followed since birth, people who spent years in the bottom fifth of income had weaker verbal memory by their fifties and larger brain ventricles, a marker of brain aging, by their seventies, even after childhood and education were accounted for.
Brain & AgingIn Depressed Brains, the New-Neuron Supply Had Stalled Where Fresh Pain Gets Sorted From Old
Columbia researchers mapped nearly 500,000 cells from postmortem brains and found the depressed ones showed a stalled supply of new hippocampal neurons, the cells thought to keep a fresh setback from merging with every old one.
Brain & AgingA Brain Clock Says Your Fourth Language Is Worth 13 Years. Nobody's Published the Proof.
The 13-years-younger figure comes from a conference talk with no paper behind it, and the sturdier study underneath still can't tell you whether the languages did anything at all.
Brain & AgingAny Amount of Midlife Movement Tracked With Slower Brain Decline, Most Clearly in Mexican American Adults
In a San Antonio cohort followed since 1979, any physical activity in midlife tracked with slower brain decline, and the link showed up most clearly in the Mexican American adults Alzheimer's research keeps leaving out.
Brain & AgingFor Twenty Years, Women Were Warned That Estrogen Raised Their Dementia Risk. Stanford's Autopsies Point the Other Way.
A randomized federal trial spent two decades warning that hormone therapy raised older women's dementia risk. A Stanford autopsy study just found the opposite association. The catch: both studied women who started the drug far too late to settle it.
Brain & AgingA Brain Full of Plaques and a Mind That Held: The Cells That May Explain Alzheimer's Resilient Third
About a third of people whose brains show the full pathology of Alzheimer's never develop dementia. Dutch researchers say the difference may not be how many young neurons they have, but whether those cells switch on a survival program instead of dying.
Brain & AgingIn Mice, Early Stress-Drinking Corroded a Brain Region a Long Sobriety Couldn't Repair
In mice, pairing alcohol with stress in early adulthood damaged a tiny noradrenaline hub in the brainstem, and a prolonged stretch of abstinence didn't reverse it. The cognitive cost surfaced in middle age.
Brain & AgingFor Decades They Treated This Stroke Like a Clog. The Arteries Were Actually Too Wide.
People with widened brain arteries were four times more likely to have had a lacunar stroke, the type doctors have treated for decades as if it were a clog.
Brain & AgingAlzheimer's Hitches a Ride on a Virus Your Neurons Tamed for Memory
In mice and in human Alzheimer's brains, toxic tau rides a protein called Arc, a virus your neurons domesticated for memory, from sick cells into healthy ones. Delete Arc and the spread nearly stops.
Brain & AgingA Juice Company Built a Department Inside a Japanese University. Its Scientists Just Found Vitamin C Guards the Aging Brain.
Kagome, Japan's largest vegetable-juice maker, funded the work, employs two of its authors, and measured the vitamin itself. The gray-matter correlation it reported is real, and small enough to miss.
Brain & AgingA Federally Backed Trial Got High-Dose Fish Oil Into the Brain Fluid. The Memory Scores Never Moved.
DHA in the spinal fluid climbed 17 percent. Cognitive scores rose 2.76 points on fish oil, 2.67 on placebo. Two years of high-dose pills bought a rounding error.
Brain & AgingA molecule your body already makes coaxed exhausted brain cells back to fighting Alzheimer's
Spanish and Swiss researchers report that OLE, a fatty-acid amino-acid the body already makes, coaxed sluggish microglia to surround amyloid plaques and improve memory in Alzheimer's mice.
Brain & AgingBrain Gains Into Your 90s Are Probably Real. The Index Measuring Them Has a Patent Pending.
A three-year UT Dallas study tracking nearly 4,000 adults to age 94 says brain function can climb at any age. The biology is plausible. The catch is that the people measuring the gain are the same people patenting the yardstick.