Schoolwork may strengthen the brain against some ill effects of aging, a new study on education and memory loss suggests.
In research made public Sunday, a team at the University of Toronto’s Rotman Research Institute used brain imaging to show that higher education may protect older people from faltering mental powers by building up alternate neural networks absent in the uneducated.
Elderly volunteers who had many years of higher education not only performed better on a series of memory tests than their less-educated peers but also used different parts of their brain, the study showed.
More years of education were associated with more active frontal lobes, areas known to be involved in problem solving, memory and judgment, the scientists reported.
Researchers know that animal brains readily respond to stimulating, enriched surroundings by developing more intricate connections between brain cells. Until now, however, no one knew what brain mechanisms might be involved in the aging human brain.
“The frontal lobes seem to be playing an important role in this protective effect that education seems to have,” said Cheryl Grady, the senior scientist involved in the research project.
“It may be the more education you have the more practice you have had using different brain strategies,” she said. “Education builds up intellectual capacity, and that may come into play.”
She cautioned that other factors such as health, exercise and diet could also be responsible for the difference in mental ability.
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