Cambridge Centre for Ageing and NeuroscienceThe Science of Ageing
A neural shift, expressed as decreased occurrence of lower-order brain networks coupled with increased occurrence of higher-order networks, is associated with both increased sleep dysfunction and decreased fluid intelligence.
During actions, older adults show greater activation in the non-dominant motor cortex. This has been suggested to be compensatory for age-related decline in the dominant hemisphere. However we find no evidence to support this, and suggest instead that the hyper-activation reflects inefficient processing or redued interhemispheric inhibition.
The temporal properties of transient brain networks measured during resting-state with MEG are associated with both age and fluid intelligence, and are more consistent with age-related inefficiency than compensation.
Brain function network changes, quantified using dispersion along multi-dimensional gradient maps, were more sensitive to age than traditional network metrics, independent from known morphological changes and scaled with fluid intelligence.
Our findings establish a brain measure of vascular health that can be used to separate vascular signals from neuronal signals in neuroimaging studies, allowing the development of better models of ageing and age-related disorders.
The gene coding a protein called APOE has been implicated in Alzheimer’s Disease. However, in a registered report, we found no evidence that the e4 variant of the gene causes faster ageing of cognition or the brain.
We review the changes that occur in the blood supply to the brain with age, and show how this can affect MRI scans of brain function. The distinction between blood supply and brain function calls for a new way to study how brain changes affect mental processes with age and age-related diseases.
We looked at five separable aspects of people’s lifestyles, such as physical and intellectual engagement, and investigated their relationship with crystallised and fluid cognitive abilities. All lifestyle factors significantly predicted age-adjusted cognitive abilities when tested separately. However, when testing simultaneously the independent contributions of different lifestyle factors to cognition, we saw a different pattern, with mental health not making a significant contribution above and beyond the other four lifestyle factors. Our paper highlights the importance of differentiating what we mean by ‘lifestyle’, and of applying sophisticated statistical tools to further understand the complex relationship tween peoples lifestyle choices and healthy cognitive ageing.
‘Motor learning’ describes our ability to learn new skills, such as playing tennis or riding a bike. In youngdults, such motor skill learning uses automatic brain systems, called implicit memory. A new Cam-CAN study shows that as we get older, motor skill learning starts to rely on a different type of memory, called explicit memory, which relies on the hippocampus. Changes in the hippocampus explain why for many people, this type of learning gets more difficult as they get older.
Older people typically report higher levels of emotional well-being despite declines in other cognitive domains such as memory and executive function. We tested age-related changes in emotional reactivity and regulation using functional MRI, showing participants positive, negative and neutral videos and asking them how each one made them feel. Older people showed decreased rather than increased positivity in their reactions, which was linked to reduced brain activity in the middle frontal gyrus, an area associated with successful emotional regulation. Thus age does not always improve emotional regulation.
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