Brain Fibers Keep Memory Sharp in Old Age

A Johns Hopkins University (JHU) study in Neurobiology of Aging could provide insights on why some people's cognitive abilities decline with age while others remain sharp, reports Technology Networks . "Some 'memory problems' aren't a matter of memory specifically, but a matter of retrieving the correct information at the right time to solve the problem at hand," noted JHU's Susan Courtney. Cohorts of young and older adults performed a mental arithmetic task while brain activity was quantified with functional magnetic resonance imaging. The task compared participants' ability to block out interfering information automatically retrieved from long-term memory. Other images also were gleaned to gauge the integrity of white matter tract connectivity. Older subjects were a fraction of a second slower at answering questions than younger participants, and brain scans revealed older individuals who had more difficulty with interference also exhibited more activation in the frontal brain. For certain older participants, fibers linking the front and back of the brain appeared to have sustained long-term damage, but other older individuals had fibers similar to younger subjects. The more integrity these fibers possessed, the better the participant's performance.