Memory and Aging: Defying Dementia

There’s been a fundamental shift in thinking about brain aging over the past several decades. The picture of normative aging that we have now is very different than in the 1970s.

• We know that memory does change with age and that we are not all headed for Alzheimer’s or vascular dementia.
• We also know that with age we lose synaptic connections and functions but there’s no widespread neurons loss.
• There is also evidence that the aging brain adapts at a network level. That even though there is a loss in synapses, the remaining synapses are more powerful, as though they were ‘compensating’ for fewer actual synapses.
• We know that there is reduced brain plasticity but change can still happen when we are older.
• And we know that there are changes in network dynamics as we age.

But experiments clearly show that older individuals can recruit additional brain circuits to achieve memory retrieval that is as accurate as that of younger individuals.

The older ideas that the brain ages passively is simply the wrong way to understand the changes that occur with age.

What can the 86% of us with healthy brains do now to maintain optimal cognition? Keep those synapses active by learning new things. Like you are doing today by reading this article.

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