Why high blood pressure can be so dangerous for memory

03/2013

Brain scans of 61 older adults (65-90), of whom 30 were cognitively healthy, 24 cognitively impaired and 7 diagnosed with dementia, found that, across all groups, both memory and executive function correlated negatively with brain infarcts, many of which had been clinically silent. The level of amyloid in the brain did not correlate with either changes in memory or executive function, and there was no evidence that amyloid interacted with infarcts to impair thinking.

Bottom line: vascular brain injury was far more important than amyloid burden for memory and executive function. The finding highlights the role of vascular injury in mild cognitive impairment.

Read full report at Futurity

[3320] Marchant NL, R BR.
(2013).  The aging brain and cognition: Contribution of vascular injury and aβ to mild cognitive dysfunction.
JAMA Neurology. 1 - 8.

Related News

A training program designed to help older adults with

Comparison of young adults (mean age 24.5) and older adults (mean age 69.1) in a visual memory test involving multitasking has pinpointed the greater problems older adults have with multitasking.

A study involving 125 younger (average age 19) and older (average age 69) adults has revealed that while younger adults showed better explicit learning, older adults were better at implicit learning. Implicit memory is our unconscious memory, which influences behavior without our awareness.

A two-year study involving 53 older adults (60+) has found that those with a mother who had Alzheimer's disease had significantly more brain atrophy than those with a father or no parent with Alzheimer's disease.

Data from the Baltimore Longitudinal Study on Aging, begun in 1958, has revealed that seniors with hearing loss are significantly more likely to develop dementia than those who retain their hearing.

Shrinking of the

A new molecular compound derived from curcumin (found in turmeric) holds promise for treating brain damage caused by stroke. Turmeric has a long history of use in Ayurvedic and Chinese traditional medicine.

The new label of ‘metabolic syndrome’ applies to those having three or more of the following risk factors: high blood pressure, excess belly fat, higher than normal triglycerides, high blood sugar and low high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol (the "good" cholesterol).

Lesions of the brain microvessels include white-matter hyperintensities and the much less common silent infarcts leading to loss of white-matter tissue.

Another study has come out proclaiming the cognitive benefits of walking for older adults.

Pages

Subscribe to Latest newsSubscribe to Latest newsSubscribe to Latest health newsSubscribe to Latest news