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Brain Aging

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Mohiedine Abouljoud
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10 views14 pages

Brain Aging

Uploaded by

Mohiedine Abouljoud
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Brain Aging

Mohiedine Aboul Joud


BAU Med 6
7/12/2022
OUTLINE
• Introduction
• Predisposing ans protective factors
• Physical changes
• Intellectual changes
• Intelligence
• Superagers
Introduction
• A human brain weighs around 3 pounds in weight, with around 100 million neurons
interconnected via trillions of synapses.

• Older adults often become anxious about memory slips due to the link between
impaired memory and Alzheimer disease. However, Alzheimer’s and
other dementias are not a part of the normal aging process.

• Aging is accompanied by many changes in brain and contributes to progressive


cognitive decline. In contrast to pathological changes in brain, normal aging brain
changes have relatively mild but important changes in structural, biochemical and
molecular level
• It has been widely found that the volume of the brain and/or its weight declines with
age at a rate of around 5% per decade after age 40 with the actual rate of decline
possibly increasing with age particularly over age 70.

• Aging of the brain doesn’t occur uniformily, nevertheless The frontal lobes are the
area of the brain mostly affected and are responsible for executive functions, such as
planning, working memory, and impulse control. These are among the last areas of
the brain to mature, and they may not develop fully until around 35 years of age.

• With growing aging population, particularly in developed countries, it has become


increasingly important to understand the cognitive changes that go hand in hand
with aging.
Predisposing factors
• Obesity in midlife may accelerate brain aging by around 10 years, and
both sugar and diet varieties of soda are associated with poor brain
health

• Psychological order especially schizophrenia, and neurological


diseases like Alzheimer and Epilepsy
• Alcoholism and poor sleep

• Physiological factors related to increased oxidative stress, Telomere


shortening, mitochondrial dysfunction and DNA repair missmatch
Protective Factors
• Protective factors for cardiovascular risks seems to aid the aging brain
• Some factors associated with better outcome includes:
 Engaging in regular physical activity
 Pursuing intellectually stimulating activities
 Staying socially active
 Managing stress
 Eating a healthful diet
 Sleeping well
 Playing instruments

• So does the increase in cognitive effort in the form of education and


occupational attainment
Physical changes

Basal ganglia Becomes bright in appearance due to iron accumulation

Subarachnoid space Increase in size due to brain shrinkage

Hippocampus Reduction in size due to cell loss in the structure

Ventricles Increase in size due brain shrinkage

White Matter Reduction in size due to neuronal atrophy in the deep


brain.
Changes Consequences

• Decreased brain weight: Shrinkage in the • Drug toxicities


frontal lobe and hippocampus, which are • delirium
areas involved in higher cognitive function
and encoding new memories, starts at • Altered mood
around the age of 60 or 70 years. • “Benign senile forgetfulness”
• Decreased Cerebral blood flow • Increased postural
• Alteration in CNS neurotransmitters instability
• Decreased vibratory sense • Altered gait
• Increased cerebral amyloid and lipofuscin • Falls, accidents

• Reduced Sympathetic nervous system


activity
• Reduced Neurotransmitter levels
• Loss of dendritic arborization
Intellectual Changes
• Neuronal loss is normal in the aging brain but the ability to learn remains generally
unchanged
• Recall memory is affected more than cognitive function in normal aging
 Difficulty learning something new: Committing new information to memory can
take longer.
 Difficulty Multitasking: Slowed processing can make planning parallel tasks more
difficult.
 Difficulty recalling names and numbers: Strategic memory, which helps with
remembering names and numbers, begins to decline at age 20.
 Remembering appointments: Without cues to recall the information, the brain
may put appointments into “storage” and not access them unless something jogs the
person’s memory.
• Working memory is the small amount of information that can be held in mind and
used in the execution of cognitive tasks like during multiplication.

• It is reliant on prefrontal cortex that undergoes cell shrinkage & cell loss with age

• Aging results in slowing of reaction time (the time it takes to respond to an event)
Intelligence

Fluid Intelligence
“tasks that involve quick thinking, info manipulation, activities involving allocation and
reallocation of attention.
E.g.: tests of memory, spatial relations, abstract & inductive reasoning, free recall, mental
calculations

crystallized intelligence.
"tasks that tap well-learned stills, language, & retrieval of well-learned material
E.g.: verbal meaning, word association, social judgement, number skills

 Differences with aging?


SuperAgers
• “SuperAgers” are a rare group of individuals over the age of 80 years who have
memories as sharp as those of healthy people decades younger

• They found that the brains of the SuperAgers shrink at a slower rate than those of
their age-matched peers, which results in a greater resistance to the typical memory
loss that occurs age. This suggests that age-related cognitive decline is not inevitable.

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