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Higher Education May Buffer Senior Citizens from Cognitive Decline
March
14, 2005 - College seems to pay off well into retirement. A new study
from the University of Toronto sheds light on why higher education seems
to buffer people from cognitive declines as they age. Brain imaging
showed that in older adults taking memory tests, more years of education
were associated with more active frontal lobes the opposite of what
happened in young adults. It appears possible that education strengthens
the ability to call in the reserves of mental prowess found in that
part of the brain.
The
finding suggests that older adults -- especially the highly educated --
use the frontal cortex as an alternative network to aid cognition.
Says
co-author Cheryl Grady, PhD, Many studies have now shown that frontal
activity is greater in old adults, compared to young; our work suggests
that this effect is related to the educational level in the older
participants. The higher the education, the more likely the older adult
is to recruit frontal regions, resulting in a better memory
performance. Grady is assistant director of the Rotman Research
Institute In Toronto and holds a Canada Research Chair in Neurocognitive
Aging.
A
team of psychologists led by Mellanie Springer, MSc, chose a memory task
because even normal aging brings some memory loss. They were intrigued
by how highly educated patients with Alzheimers disease appear to be
better able than less educated patients to compensate for brain
pathology, which suggested that education somehow protects cognition.
To
understand the mechanism, the researchers studied the relationship
between education and brain activity in two different age groups: 14
adults of ages 18 to 30, with 11 to 20 years of education, and 19 adults
of age 65 and up, with eight to 21 years of education.
Springer and her colleagues ran each participant through several memory
tests while scanning his or her brain with functional magnetic resonance
imaging (MRI). The resulting images showed Springer and her colleagues
which neural networks became active when participants tapped into
memory. The psychologists then correlated brain activity for each member
of the two groups with their corresponding years of education.
Relative to education, younger and older adults had opposite patterns of
activity in the frontal lobes (behind the forehead) and medial temporal
lobes (on the sides). In young adults performing the memory tasks, more
education was associated with less use of the frontal lobes and more use
of the temporal lobes. For the older adults doing the same tasks, more
education was associated with less use of the temporal lobes and more
use of the frontal lobes.
Education appears to enable older people to more effectively "call up
the reserves." Highly educated older adults might be better able to
enlist the frontal lobes into working for them as a type of cognitive
reserve or alternative network. Grady cites evidence that when older
adults tap their frontal lobes, that activity engages the medial
temporal regions less than it does in younger adults. She speculates
that if the medial temporal lobes cant be recruited properly, the
frontal lobes have to help out. Grady further thinks that the frontal
lobes compensatory role supports cognition generally.
Researchers hope to further understand how mental exercise strengthens
mental muscles, so to speak, in old age. Animal brains respond to more
complex environments by growing more neural connections; perhaps, says
Grady, more education while the brain is still developing -- up to age
30 it is still maturing causes more connections between brain regions
to form. When some of these are lost with age, there are still enough
left, a type of redundancy in the system.
She
adds that highly educated people keep more active physically and
mentally as they age, which also has a beneficial effect on cognition.
A
full report appears in the March issue of Neuropsychology, which
is published by the American Psychological Association (APA).
Article: The Relation Between Brain Activity During Memory Tasks and
Years of Education in Young and Older adults, Mellanie V. Springer, MSc,
Anthony R. McIntosh, PhD, Gordon Winocur, PhD, and Cheryl L. Grady, PhD;
University of Toronto; Neuropsychology and Aging, Vol. 19, No. 2.
The
American Psychological Association (APA), in Washington, DC, is the
largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology
in the United States and is the worlds largest association of
psychologists. APAs membership includes more than 150,000 researchers,
educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions
in 53 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 60 state,
territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance
psychology as a science, as a profession and as a means of promoting
human welfare.
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