A team of researchers has studied brain aging measuring the volume of the cortical mantle and hippocampal regions of the brain provided with MRI scanners of more than 2000 participants.
These areas of the brain are prone to shrink over time, as a natural part of aging. The brains of the participants were scanned up to three times over a period of 11 years, thus being a large-scale longitudinal test, one of the largest of its kind.
Brain shrinkage
The researchers compared the rate of reduction in these areas in people who had obtained higher education before age 30 and those who did not. Participants were between 29 and 91 years old.
What they concluded is that higher education is modestly related to larger brains.
While the rate of brain change was similar in participants with and without higher education, the researchers found that those with higher education had slightly larger cortical volume in some regions, but even in these regions, the rate of change was not related to education.
In conclusion, the human brain shrinks. Even in healthy individuals, those who do not suffer from any neurodegenerative disease, or those who have higher education, this gradual reduction in size is recorded from the age of 25 and the process accelerates after the age of 50. This atrophy is mainly localized. in the frontal lobe and the hippocampus, the area where memories are fixed, so that it has direct consequences on faculties such as our ability to reason, mental speed or episodic memory.
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The news
No, having higher education does not influence how the brain ages
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.