Working Toward a Fit Brain
The key to staying young may be the ability to tolerate discomfort in our later years, and not to forget that our brain is connected to something important: our bodies.
Superagers are people 65 and older whose memory and mental focus are equal to those who are 40 years younger. Scientists studying how to improve the chances of staying sharp have come to one conclusion: work hard at something.
Critical brain regions — those that control language, stress, regulation of internal organs, and coordination of the five senses — show higher activity levels and are thickened when people perform difficult mental or physical tasks, such as tournament bridge or swimming.
“The road to superaging is difficult,” Lisa Feldman Barrett wrote in The Times, because we feel badly when these brain regions are en- gaged in stressful activity. We feel “tired, stymied, frustrated. Hard work makes you feel bad in the moment.”
Taking a stroll or doing simple puzzles just isn’t enough, Ms. Barrett says. Some sweat and exasperation is required, which people tend to avoid as they get older. Ultimately, that reluctance can be detrimental to the brain.
“All brain tissue gets thinner from disuse,” she wrote. “If you don’t use it, you lose it.”
The brain’s ability to form new connections and react to the environment, known as neuroplasticity, peaks in childhood and adolescence. Until recently, scientists believed that this period of learning was finite.
Now, they have found that a few key molecules control open and shut periods in brain development. The mood stabilizer valproic acid, which is commonly used to treat bipolar disorder, can block these molecules and allow the brain to recapture some of its plasticity, The Times reported.
These findings have important implications for treating many disorders since adolescents are simultaneously at the peak of their brain plasticity and their vulnerability to mental illness. Three- quarters of psychiatric disorders are present by age 25, and half have their onset during adolescence.
In studies of rats, researchers found that some molecules were successful in reversing the harmful effects of early life experiences. Since early stress is a strong risk factor for many psychiatric illnesses, like mood and anxiety disorders as well as certain personality disorders, scientists hope that these therapies work in humans as well, The Times reported.
The quest for the next magical activity that relieves stress never ends. These days a plunge in a sensory deprivation tank, where participants are disconnected from the world as they float in the dark in a pool of salt water, is in vogue.
Richard A. Friedman, a psychiatrist, tried it. As he pulled the top down and turned off the light he “waited for a profound experience to wash over me.” At first, he felt nothing, then he realized he could not feel his body, which seemed to be the point of depriving the brain of physical sensations.
“This is what adherents paid $89 a pop to feel,” he wrote in The Times. “I’d heard it was better than meditation, yoga and drugs — perhaps because it promised nirvana without any effort or side effects.”
But when his head dropped and he got some salt water in his eye, the period of nothingness ended and he felt curious at first, then bored, and finally annoyed.
“Instead of a transcendent excursion into an altered consciousness, sensory deprivation had hilariously underscored the primacy of my body,” Dr. Friedman wrote. He said much of the research encourages the notion that the brain overrules all else.
“We are not just a brain in a jar,” he wrote. “We are also bodies, and what we do with those bodies can influence the brain.”