Latest Research News

A Spanish study involving 101 overweight/obese children (aged 8-11) has found that aerobic capacity and motor ability is associated with a greater volume of gray matter in several cortical and subcortical brain regions.

Aerobic capacity was associated with greater gray matter volume in the premotor cortex, supplementary motor cortex, hippocampus, caudate nucleus, inferior temporal gyrus, parahippocampal gyrus, and the calcarine cortex. Three of these regions (premotor cortex, supplementary motor cortex and hippocampus) were also related to better academic performance.

Accumulating evidence suggests that tau spreads through brain tissue like an infection, traveling from neuron to neuron and turning other proteins into abnormal tangles, subsequently killing brain cells.

A long-running study involving 8225 adults found that self-reported diet during midlife (mean age 50) was not significantly associated with subsequent risk for dementia.

Dietary intake was assessed in 1991-1993, 1997-1999, and 2002-2004, with follow-up for incident dementia until March 31, 2017. Diet quality was assessed using the Alternate Healthy Eating Index (AHEI), an 11-component diet quality score (score range, 0-110), with higher scores indicating a healthier diet.

A study has found evidence that brain changes associated with aging can be seen at a much younger age than would be expected, in the late 40s. However, this process may be prevented or reversed based on dietary changes that involve minimizing the consumption of simple carbohydrates.

It’s suggested that, as people get older, their brains start to lose the ability to metabolize glucose efficiently, causing neurons to slowly starve, and brain networks to destabilize.

It has been well-established that, compared to younger adults, older adults require more practice to achieve the same level of performance₁. Sometimes, indeed, they may need twice as much₂.

In the present study, two groups of adult subjects were given paired items to learn during multiple study-test trials. During each trial items were presented at the subject's pace. Afterwards the subjects were asked to judge how likely they were to be able to recall each item in a test.

A small trial involving seven older adults with insomnia has found that when they consumed 8 ounces of tart cherry juice twice daily for two weeks, they were able to sleep more than an hour longer each night (averaging 84 minutes) compared to when they took the placebo, and their sleep tended to be more efficient.

Montmorency tart cherries are a natural source of melatonin, a hormone that helps regulate the sleep-wake cycle. The juice also helped to increase the availability of tryptophan, an essential amino acid and a precursor to serotonin that helps with sleep.

A year-long study involving 424 sedentary, mobility-limited seniors aged 70-89, has found that variants in a specific gene (the ACE I/D gene) affect seniors’ ability to benefit from exercise. Physical activity intervention led to greater improvements in walking speed among ID and DD genotype carriers (29.9% and 13.7% respectively), but among II genotype carriers, health education alone led to more improvements in walking speed than physical activity intervention (20% vs. 18.5%).

Comparison of the EEGs of 27 healthy older adults, 27 individuals with mild Alzheimer's and 22 individuals with moderate cases of Alzheimer’s, has found statistically significant differences across the three groups, using an algorithm that dissects brain waves of varying frequencies.

A review and a large study have recently added to the growing evidence that type 2 diabetes is not only a risk factor for Alzheimer's, but is also linked to poorer cognitive function and faster age-related cognitive decline. The amount of this also seems to be related to glucose control in a dose-dependent manner.

A study involving 382 older adults (average age 75) followed for around five years, has found that those who don’t get enough vitamin D may experience cognitive decline at a much faster rate than people who have adequate vitamin D.

Participants included 17.5% with dementia at the beginning of the study, 32.7% with MCI, and 49.5% cognitively healthy.

Those with dementia had lower levels of vitamin D than the other two groups.