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The brain expands and shrinks over time
- DoreenMichele 5y agoSeidlitz has amassed more than 120,000 brain scans — the largest collection of its kind — to create the first comprehensive growth charts for brain development. The unusually large sample size alone makes this an important body of work.
- thenerdhead 5y agoDo these graphs help confirm that "over the hill" age is around 40?
- qiskit 5y agoIn the chart, all the metrics look like they are in a state of decline in your mid 30s. So we can safely assume by 40, you ( or your brain specifically ) is over the hill.
- andrewjl 5y agoWe can't safely assume that universally due to selection effects the data for these kinds of studies has.
- NhanH 5y agoYeah, just to point out something specific: only 1% of the dataset comes from Asia. Something similar might happen in other dimension. We don’t know if 50% of the images come from people with genetic degenerative brain disease or not. MRI is special enough that it would be hard to say the sampling is similar to the general population
- neatze 5y agoI don't think it is "over the hill" capabilities wise to some extent.
- dimgl 5y agoWhat does "over the hill" mean? That there's a snowball in cognitive decline after 40?
- eurasiantiger 5y agoI think that’s the age when most workers start moving into positions where they no longer need to actively solve hard, abstract problems, and the brain starts to atrophy just like a muscle that gets no exercise. Combine that with an increase in stress levels due to no longer being able to directly ensure the success of work and you get a managerial brain grinder.
- qiskit 5y agoAccording to the chart, the only thing that increases in late adulthood is ventricular volume. Interesting. "An increase in ventricle size is associated with degenerative brain disease and gait." https://www.mayoclinic.org/medical-professionals/neurology-neurosurgery/news/ventricular-volume-clinical-utility-for-assessing-current-and-future-cognition-and-gait/mac-20502067 https://www.mayoclinic.org/medical-professionals/neurology-n... Nice. Hopefully this puts to rest "your brain gets better as it ages" nonsense. There has to be a correlation between the physical changes of the brain as we age and the decline in cognition. Edit: The researchers website with real time charts, male/female data/breakdown, etc https://brainchart.shinyapps.io/brainchart/ https://brainchart.shinyapps.io/brainchart/
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- alar44 5y agoSorry, who thinks your brain gets better as it ages and why would anyone think that?
- throwamon 5y agoMaybe people whose brain is getting worse so they can't think straight?
- shrimp_emoji 5y agoWhat if it's getting better because it's fitting reality more tightly by cutting off slack neurons? :) According to the chart there, your largest gray matter volume is at 6 and greatest cortical thickness is between 1 and 6. I'll leave it to you to decide whether your brain is better now than at 6. (Assuming you're reading this while being significantly older than 6.)
- alar44 5y ago"Well ya see, Norm, it’s like this… A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members. In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But naturally it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. That’s why you always feel smarter after a few beers.” -Cliff Clavin
- andrewjl 5y agoThis is a very impressive data set. I'm curious about the statistical techniques the scientists used to normalize the measurements across different imaging machines. Worth digging into for the stats-inclined.
- h2odragon 5y agoI seem to recall a number of "$X is bad for you because it shrinks the brain" articles. Wonder how many will be reviewed and find that $X is still bad for you despite whatever effect they alleged being even less likely to be meaningful. that's the bitch about "bespoke science," you can report that "the Science says" whatever you like (if you can afford it) but then it requires maintenance to make sure it keeps saying that.
- buzzard1 5y ago
- reactor 5y agoAge will eventually catch up, but meditation, aerobic exercise, good sleeping pattern, certain video games, good tangible social connections, exploring novel things are shown to moderate the decline. While stress/tension, sedentary lifestyle and most importantly loneliness accelerate the decline.
- eBombzor 5y agoLoneliness? Source for that?
- QuikAccount 5y agoHere is an article that references several studies but a search including 'loneliness and health' will bring up dozens of studies. https://www.brainandlife.org/articles/how-loneliness-affects-health/ https://www.brainandlife.org/articles/how-loneliness-affects...
- zuzuleinen 5y agoWhat video games do you think are helpful? Any source for that?
- jcl 5y agoTraining with the n-back task (a memory game) has been shown in some studies to improve performance in other cognitive tasks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-back#Treatment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-back#Treatment
- Terry_Roll 5y agoYou missed the most important one... Diet! I take Choline to help me remember.
- hackernewds 5y agoWhat is choline?
- smegsicle 5y agoi think i'm in a small brain period right now
- sgfgross 5y agoIf anyone is interested in the pdf: https://oa.mg/work/10.1101/2021.06.08.447489 https://oa.mg/work/10.1101/2021.06.08.447489
- eurasiantiger 5y agoIn other words all the ”X shrinks your brain” scare stories are just that, scare stories.
- jxramos 5y agoI thought MRI had no absolute spatial scale unlike a CT or X-ray does when a known dimension radio-opaque reference marker object is put into the field of view. Am I mistaken here?
- bell-cot 5y agoIt's interesting how many folks seem kinda obsessed with brain size... Does anyone know of a company (or university, govt. agency, etc.) which hired or promoted on the basis of "physically larger brains perform better" - and was actually successful with that? Probably using some rough cranial measurements as a proxy for brain size, vs. MRI's. I'd bet that the real-world performance of that strategy would be considerably worse than random chance, due to various knock-on effects.
- tsol 5y agoIt's been proven that brain size has close to nothing to do with intelligence. Hell, some people get half of their brains removed to stop intractable seizures and if it happens as a child they tend to recover completely and live normal lives
- taneq 5y agoPhrenology has had its adherents over the years, none that I know of were successful in proving any real predictive power though. Brain size and intelligence seem to only be correlated in the loosest of ways anyway. Everything we know about performance of information processing systems says that their size and weight is almost irrelevant compared with their design. We expect simple algorithmic optimizations to provide orders of magnitude of improvement, and more advanced ones to provide more orders of magnitude on top of that. If I recall rightly the metric with the best performance is ratio of brain to body mass. This would make sense if you assume that brain performance is determined largely by its 'design' and scales only modestly with mass, and that creatures of the same species share the same design.