The Shrinking Brain
Tuesday, July 26, 2011 - 09:40
in Biology & Nature
Age does a lot of things to us. And to our brains, which shrink when we grow older. Those incredibly complex neural networks inside our skulls not only shrink, but they also become more susceptible to scourges such as dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. People who do not suffer from these cognitive dysfunctions, also show aging effects in their brains, such as the accumulation of amyloid-beta plaques. To trace the evolutionary roots of the aging brain, researchers have previously investigated whether similar effects occur in the brains of rhesus monkeys (which diverged from the ‘human lineage’ about 30 million years ago). These primates showed only very limited effects of age in their brains. So, the mystery remained.read more
