Brain info

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Just like a house built in the 1920s has a different wiring capacity from one built in this decade, your brain has different power capacities as it ages. See, an older home could function fine with its original electrical system when all it had to handle was a refrigerator, a coffee pot, and a little Ed Sullivan. But if you were to try pumping up an old house with computers, surround sound, and your 8-year-old's video-game setup, it would shock and overload the electrical system, blow a fuse, start a fire, and burn down your whole house. On the other hand, a young house is equipped to withstand all of modern society's demands, so it can supply power to everything.

Your brain works the same way. In fact, most brains don't age very well at all under normal circumstances. Younger brains are equipped to handle overloads with only an accidental glitch here and there, but older brains need upgrading to avoid neurological blown fuses and major power outages.

Luckily, cognitive upgrading-by doing many things that can help your brain stay sharp-doesn't require a subcontractor. It's a do-it-yourself project that has many wonderful outcomes: It will keep your brain function high throughout your life, it will minimize the deterioration that takes place as part of the normal aging process, and it will help re-grow brain cells to keep your mind as sharp as a coral reef.

A decrease in brain function isn't inevitable and involuntary; you have the ability to influence what side of the roller coaster your brain function rides-steadily moving up, or going downhill fast. What's best is that you don't need to be a Rhodes Scholar to stay mentally strong. Simple changes can do the trick. Physical activity, for one, improves arterial function, and better arterial function improves brain function.

Most people notice subtle changes in their cognitive abilities as they get older. It may take longer to think through a problem or make a calculation. Memory also may be affected. Older adults often report having increasing difficulty with short-term memory, such as forgetting where they left the car keys. They also may falter as they try to recall someone's name or a familiar word that is "on the tip of the tongue."

These changes occur to some degree in just about everyone, but they don't necessarily signal a serious medical condition such as Alzheimer's disease.

Along with these cognitive changes, there are physical changes that occur in the brain. The brain shrinks in size, and brain cells (neurons) in certain areas are lost or become faulty. These age-related changes are most likely responsible for some of the declines in cognitive abilities. However, the exact mechanisms for how this takes place are not entirely clear and are the subject of much current research.

Research on the neurobiology of aging is a large and growing field, which has begun to shed some light on what happens to the mental abilities of adults as they grow older. Some previously held beliefs have been shown to be incorrect. For example, aging does not entail a steady decline in mental and physical function as more and more brain cells die. Throughout life, including old age, cognitive development undergoes both gains and losses. As this growing body of research has already demonstrated, the brain is a complex organ that is both adaptable and modifiable.

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