7 ms·

This sort of news really scare me. Your brain defines who you are and what capabilities you have, and damaging it can completely change you. The brain is very r

This sort of news really scare me. Your brain defines who you are and what capabilities you have, and damaging it can completely change you. The brain is very responsible for a big part of your success and losing it can have a big impact in your life.

madaxe_again 11y ago
Cognitive decline happens whether you like it or not, I'm afraid to say. I've hit my early 30s and I've started noticing that I'm far more prone to inappropriately replaced words, can't memorise long strings of digits as well as I used to be able to, and so-forth.
- unclebucknasty 11y ago
  >I've hit my early 30s and I've started noticing that I'm far more prone... That's a really young age to have any sort of marked age-related cognitive decline. It might be explained by something else--even something as "simple" as insufficient quality sleep or stress, both of which can wreak havoc on cognitive ability.
- melted 11y ago
  This could be because you're not getting enough sleep (or aren't sleeping well due to e.g. apnea or something). Set up a simple experiment: go to bed 1-1.5 hours earlier than you usually do for a couple of weeks and see if your "cognitive decline" disappears. As you age you might find you need more sleep.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    > As you age you might find you need more sleep. This is very true for me, much to my surprise. I used to get by on 3 to 4 hours every night but that seems to have really caught up with me. If I don't get 8 hours minimum now I'm woozy the rest of the day.
    - unclebucknasty 11y ago
      Same here. And "buzzy" when I'm really sleep-deprived. It literally feels like low-level electrical interference running through my head and my thinking and focus are nowhere near as sharp. It is like some sort of intoxication, which is fitting, because one of the things sleep does for us is clear toxins from our brains.
      - jacquesm 11y ago
        > And "buzzy" when I'm really sleep-deprived. It literally feels like low-level electrical interference running through my head and my thinking and focus are nowhere near as sharp. That's eerie, I have that too. Especially when it is totally quiet in the house. At first I thought it was because I heard the refrigerator, but I switched that off to rule it out. Then I powered down the whole house and the low humming remains. I'll have to try this when I'm totally rested to see if it goes away then, I never made the link to lack of sleep.
        unclebucknasty 11y ago
        Ok, now this is really funny. There's the buzzy feeling, which I considered distinct from the low hum (til now), but I absolutely hear that low-hum too and also assumed it was the refrigerator. It is more pronounced at certain times, but I never linked it to my sleep deprivation. I'll have to pay attention to that. Another thing is that I seem to be "sensitive" to some electronics. For instance, I cannot hold a cell phone to my head for more than a few minutes and I even have to take breaks when listening to music on headphones. The feeling I get bears some similarity to my sleep-deprived state, so I have wondered about a relationship there, if not just a further reduction of my tolerance of electronics.
        jacquesm 11y ago
        I think a good part here is that where I live it is very quiet. Last house on a dead end street, nothing but fields around me for miles and miles. So when it's quiet it is really quiet, so quiet that sounds that you'd otherwise never even notice become audible because your brain just keeps cranking up the gain. I can hear the dear foraging around the house at night, and if a car passes on the nearest highway (a few kilometers away) I can hear that clearly too. But during the day all those sounds vanish, masked by the ever present background noise level which is far higher than it is during the night. And my hearing is actually not nearly as good as it used to be. One simple solution I've found is to play really low volume white noise, that seems to instantly drown out all of it but strangely enough is very hard to detect by itself. I never noticed any 'sensitivity to electronics'.
  - unclebucknasty 11y ago
    Good point on the apnea, which tends to come with age, especially if overweight. There are different forms and degrees that don't involve waking and gasping for air, but that could easily impair quality sleep. One sign is consistently feeling unrefreshed after a full night's sleep. Also a good point about giving it a couple weeks. Chronic sleep deprivation can't be fixed with a night or two of "catching up".
  - DenisM 11y ago
    Very important point. When I sleep well for a couple of week my memory and cognition are very sharp, but when I don't sleep well I'm having all kinds of cognitive problems. At 30 years old you're likely to have developed something like a sleep apnea, or caffeine metabolism slowdown, or some of the many other problems affecting sleep. Having said that, simply going to be earlier is not likely to help weed out most of these disorders. Go to a sleep doctor and see what they say. Also, are you getting more irate? For many people it's a lot easier to get angry when they lack sleep.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  > I've hit my early 30s and I've started noticing that I'm far more prone to inappropriately replaced words, Is this an example of that? Did you mean 'placed' or do I mis-understand you?
  - Elrac 11y ago
    Not the guy you're asking, but I recently said "portico" when I meant to say "patio." I mixed up the two words because they both start with a P and have something to do with architecture. I think this is the kind of thing he meant by "replacement," and it's been happening to me (55) more frequently in recent years.
    - madaxe_again 11y ago
      Yup, precisely this. I'm inclined to think it may be more sleep deprivation driven than anything else, as I find myself doing it intermittently - and the odd thing is I'll proof what I've written thrice and I'll still mis-read incorrect words as what I had intended rather than what I wrote. Definitely didn't do this in the past, I find it disquieting, but it's hardly insurmountable!
- Udo 11y ago
  That's way too early in life for signs of cognitive decline. Are you challenging yourself enough? Do you get adequate and deep rest? Are you preoccupied or depressed? Are you keeping yourself healthy? I know, these are personal (and maybe somewhat condescending-sounding) questions - but they're just examples for things that can impact your mental performance. Generally, the body's ability to take punishment starts to decline in the thirties which can manifest in mental impairment, but someone who's taking good care of themselves should actually enjoy a pretty well-tuned brain. Biologically speaking there should not be enough damage to justify capability deterioration for a long time to come. All things being equal, I'd say it comes down to the use-it-or-lose it mantra: your brain gets better in areas where it's being used, and atrophies in others where it isn't. Mental competence is not a hallmark of youth. In fact, problem-solving performance in many fields should go up with experience, and only degrade very late in life when things like ischemic attacks, prions, cellular garbage, and the natural neuronal die-off rate all come into play as significant factors.
  - outworlder 11y ago
    > Do you get adequate and deep rest? This is key. I have noticed the same symptoms as the parent. And I can't be blamed by not challenging my brain enough - I am learning Haskell, doing a side project and there's the day job. If I had to measure myself, I'd guess that I'm working at 40% of what I was in my 20's (I'm 34). However, I probably have sleep apnea (I say probably because my doctor asked me to get a bunch of exams and I'm not through with all of them yet, only thing I know for certain is that the blood pressure is higher than it should be). I self medicate with copious amounts of caffeine and yet I'm always feeling sleepy and hazy, as if I were not fully out in the real world. So yeah, the other poster likely has some underlying health condition. Which could be as simple as not getting enough sleep. I can't function at all with less than 8 hours, while I could in my youth.
    - marcosdumay 11y ago
      > I self medicate with copious amounts of caffeine and yet I'm always feeling sleepy and hazy, as if I were not fully out in the real world. Have you tried stopping? I mean, too much caffeine makes me sleepy too (not over the same say, but after a while).
- wlievens 11y ago
  Did you perhaps also have children recently? They're an absolute joy, but also tend to make you at least 20% dumber :-)
- trimble-alum 11y ago
  It's possible to push oneself "harder" and regain function ("neuroplasticity"), as evidenced by stroke rehab. This is why it's vital to do challenging mental exercises like crosswords puzzles, etc. ("use it or lose it.) Generally though, the article makes sense because the common cell machinery of nerves (which don't divide as much as say intenstine or dermis cells) can be hampered by underlying issues affecting organelles within nerve cells, which then manifests as functional, quantitative deficit at the macro level.
- mikekchar 11y ago
  I'm in my late 40s. Definitely I'm not the same person, cognitively, that I was in my 20s. It's not all bad, though. I'm sure I would score lower in an IQ test, but I'm actually more capable than I was back then. Experience counts for a lot. I can deal with emotional stress much better, or perhaps I can avoid the situations which cause it (more likely). I can see other people's point of view a lot easier now. I can see gradations in judgement, where before everything was black and white. It sucks to lose the horse power, but I more than make up for it by driving the car in the right direction. I suspect the decline will continue, but in many ways I look forward to what I will be able to accomplish when I'm older.
- JohnBooty 11y ago
  Anecdotally: I'm a week away from turning 39 and I don't feel I've lost any "raw" mental ability, but actual performance has gotten more challenging because I'm pulled in many more directions at once. Very few people face the same level of obligations at 20 as they will at 30 or 40. There's also the Dunning-Kruger effect: the better you get at something, the worse you feel you are at it... presumably, all of us have made strides towards mastering our craft in the last 10 or 20 years....
- codexjourneys 11y ago
  I've noticed a decline in memorization capability in my 30s too, and it sometimes takes a little while to remember small details like what I just ate. It's offset by an increase in my ability to make connections between different topics and ideas. On balance, I'd choose the connection-making brain over the raw-power brain.
axonopathy 11y ago
I can definitely relate to this comment. The synaptic composition of your brain is essentially your identity, your merits and demerits. I'm definitely a hypochondriac when it comes to brain health, given how high the stakes are. It's crazy that even a minor concussion can cause lasting brain damage: http://www.npr.org/2013/03/15/174409382/can-just-one-concussion-change-the-brain http://www.npr.org/2013/03/15/174409382/can-just-one-concuss...
MaysonL 11y ago
The brain is also quite resilient. I got shot in the head a few decades ago (.22, luckily) with skull fracture and moderate brain damage – mainly a large hole in my visual field, with occasional visual migraines. Intellectually, I seem to have mainly lost a few steps as far as 3d visualizations are concerned, otherwise still about +3 sd IQ.
- farresito 11y ago
  Glad to hear you are doing so well! Yes, I completely agree with you the power of the brain to heal itself is amazing. I'm also quite excited by what things are coming in the next ten or twenty years. A good diet probably does wonders, too. I've been suffering from health issues for the past four years. That's why I'm interested in the brain (I suffer from extreme brain fog, and by extreme I really mean extreme; I can't have a conversation with anyone face to face, and I even have some issues when chatting with people. It takes a long time to really think about what I need to say. I still cannot understand how I'm managing to go through college).

madaxe_again 11y ago

Cognitive decline happens whether you like it or not, I'm afraid to say. I've hit my early 30s and I've started noticing that I'm far more prone to inappropriately replaced words, can't memorise long strings of digits as well as I used to be able to, and so-forth.

unclebucknasty 11y ago
>I've hit my early 30s and I've started noticing that I'm far more prone... That's a really young age to have any sort of marked age-related cognitive decline. It might be explained by something else--even something as "simple" as insufficient quality sleep or stress, both of which can wreak havoc on cognitive ability.
melted 11y ago
This could be because you're not getting enough sleep (or aren't sleeping well due to e.g. apnea or something). Set up a simple experiment: go to bed 1-1.5 hours earlier than you usually do for a couple of weeks and see if your "cognitive decline" disappears. As you age you might find you need more sleep.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  > As you age you might find you need more sleep. This is very true for me, much to my surprise. I used to get by on 3 to 4 hours every night but that seems to have really caught up with me. If I don't get 8 hours minimum now I'm woozy the rest of the day.
  - unclebucknasty 11y ago
    Same here. And "buzzy" when I'm really sleep-deprived. It literally feels like low-level electrical interference running through my head and my thinking and focus are nowhere near as sharp. It is like some sort of intoxication, which is fitting, because one of the things sleep does for us is clear toxins from our brains.
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      > And "buzzy" when I'm really sleep-deprived. It literally feels like low-level electrical interference running through my head and my thinking and focus are nowhere near as sharp. That's eerie, I have that too. Especially when it is totally quiet in the house. At first I thought it was because I heard the refrigerator, but I switched that off to rule it out. Then I powered down the whole house and the low humming remains. I'll have to try this when I'm totally rested to see if it goes away then, I never made the link to lack of sleep.
      - unclebucknasty 11y ago
        Ok, now this is really funny. There's the buzzy feeling, which I considered distinct from the low hum (til now), but I absolutely hear that low-hum too and also assumed it was the refrigerator. It is more pronounced at certain times, but I never linked it to my sleep deprivation. I'll have to pay attention to that. Another thing is that I seem to be "sensitive" to some electronics. For instance, I cannot hold a cell phone to my head for more than a few minutes and I even have to take breaks when listening to music on headphones. The feeling I get bears some similarity to my sleep-deprived state, so I have wondered about a relationship there, if not just a further reduction of my tolerance of electronics.
        jacquesm 11y ago
        I think a good part here is that where I live it is very quiet. Last house on a dead end street, nothing but fields around me for miles and miles. So when it's quiet it is really quiet, so quiet that sounds that you'd otherwise never even notice become audible because your brain just keeps cranking up the gain. I can hear the dear foraging around the house at night, and if a car passes on the nearest highway (a few kilometers away) I can hear that clearly too. But during the day all those sounds vanish, masked by the ever present background noise level which is far higher than it is during the night. And my hearing is actually not nearly as good as it used to be. One simple solution I've found is to play really low volume white noise, that seems to instantly drown out all of it but strangely enough is very hard to detect by itself. I never noticed any 'sensitivity to electronics'.
- unclebucknasty 11y ago
  Good point on the apnea, which tends to come with age, especially if overweight. There are different forms and degrees that don't involve waking and gasping for air, but that could easily impair quality sleep. One sign is consistently feeling unrefreshed after a full night's sleep. Also a good point about giving it a couple weeks. Chronic sleep deprivation can't be fixed with a night or two of "catching up".
- DenisM 11y ago
  Very important point. When I sleep well for a couple of week my memory and cognition are very sharp, but when I don't sleep well I'm having all kinds of cognitive problems. At 30 years old you're likely to have developed something like a sleep apnea, or caffeine metabolism slowdown, or some of the many other problems affecting sleep. Having said that, simply going to be earlier is not likely to help weed out most of these disorders. Go to a sleep doctor and see what they say. Also, are you getting more irate? For many people it's a lot easier to get angry when they lack sleep.
jacquesm 11y ago
> I've hit my early 30s and I've started noticing that I'm far more prone to inappropriately replaced words, Is this an example of that? Did you mean 'placed' or do I mis-understand you?
- Elrac 11y ago
  Not the guy you're asking, but I recently said "portico" when I meant to say "patio." I mixed up the two words because they both start with a P and have something to do with architecture. I think this is the kind of thing he meant by "replacement," and it's been happening to me (55) more frequently in recent years.
  - madaxe_again 11y ago
    Yup, precisely this. I'm inclined to think it may be more sleep deprivation driven than anything else, as I find myself doing it intermittently - and the odd thing is I'll proof what I've written thrice and I'll still mis-read incorrect words as what I had intended rather than what I wrote. Definitely didn't do this in the past, I find it disquieting, but it's hardly insurmountable!
Udo 11y ago
That's way too early in life for signs of cognitive decline. Are you challenging yourself enough? Do you get adequate and deep rest? Are you preoccupied or depressed? Are you keeping yourself healthy? I know, these are personal (and maybe somewhat condescending-sounding) questions - but they're just examples for things that can impact your mental performance. Generally, the body's ability to take punishment starts to decline in the thirties which can manifest in mental impairment, but someone who's taking good care of themselves should actually enjoy a pretty well-tuned brain. Biologically speaking there should not be enough damage to justify capability deterioration for a long time to come. All things being equal, I'd say it comes down to the use-it-or-lose it mantra: your brain gets better in areas where it's being used, and atrophies in others where it isn't. Mental competence is not a hallmark of youth. In fact, problem-solving performance in many fields should go up with experience, and only degrade very late in life when things like ischemic attacks, prions, cellular garbage, and the natural neuronal die-off rate all come into play as significant factors.
- outworlder 11y ago
  > Do you get adequate and deep rest? This is key. I have noticed the same symptoms as the parent. And I can't be blamed by not challenging my brain enough - I am learning Haskell, doing a side project and there's the day job. If I had to measure myself, I'd guess that I'm working at 40% of what I was in my 20's (I'm 34). However, I probably have sleep apnea (I say probably because my doctor asked me to get a bunch of exams and I'm not through with all of them yet, only thing I know for certain is that the blood pressure is higher than it should be). I self medicate with copious amounts of caffeine and yet I'm always feeling sleepy and hazy, as if I were not fully out in the real world. So yeah, the other poster likely has some underlying health condition. Which could be as simple as not getting enough sleep. I can't function at all with less than 8 hours, while I could in my youth.
  - marcosdumay 11y ago
    > I self medicate with copious amounts of caffeine and yet I'm always feeling sleepy and hazy, as if I were not fully out in the real world. Have you tried stopping? I mean, too much caffeine makes me sleepy too (not over the same say, but after a while).
wlievens 11y ago
Did you perhaps also have children recently? They're an absolute joy, but also tend to make you at least 20% dumber :-)
trimble-alum 11y ago
It's possible to push oneself "harder" and regain function ("neuroplasticity"), as evidenced by stroke rehab. This is why it's vital to do challenging mental exercises like crosswords puzzles, etc. ("use it or lose it.) Generally though, the article makes sense because the common cell machinery of nerves (which don't divide as much as say intenstine or dermis cells) can be hampered by underlying issues affecting organelles within nerve cells, which then manifests as functional, quantitative deficit at the macro level.
mikekchar 11y ago
I'm in my late 40s. Definitely I'm not the same person, cognitively, that I was in my 20s. It's not all bad, though. I'm sure I would score lower in an IQ test, but I'm actually more capable than I was back then. Experience counts for a lot. I can deal with emotional stress much better, or perhaps I can avoid the situations which cause it (more likely). I can see other people's point of view a lot easier now. I can see gradations in judgement, where before everything was black and white. It sucks to lose the horse power, but I more than make up for it by driving the car in the right direction. I suspect the decline will continue, but in many ways I look forward to what I will be able to accomplish when I'm older.
JohnBooty 11y ago
Anecdotally: I'm a week away from turning 39 and I don't feel I've lost any "raw" mental ability, but actual performance has gotten more challenging because I'm pulled in many more directions at once. Very few people face the same level of obligations at 20 as they will at 30 or 40. There's also the Dunning-Kruger effect: the better you get at something, the worse you feel you are at it... presumably, all of us have made strides towards mastering our craft in the last 10 or 20 years....
codexjourneys 11y ago
I've noticed a decline in memorization capability in my 30s too, and it sometimes takes a little while to remember small details like what I just ate. It's offset by an increase in my ability to make connections between different topics and ideas. On balance, I'd choose the connection-making brain over the raw-power brain.

axonopathy 11y ago

I can definitely relate to this comment. The synaptic composition of your brain is essentially your identity, your merits and demerits. I'm definitely a hypochondriac when it comes to brain health, given how high the stakes are. It's crazy that even a minor concussion can cause lasting brain damage: http://www.npr.org/2013/03/15/174409382/can-just-one-concussion-change-the-brain http://www.npr.org/2013/03/15/174409382/can-just-one-concuss...

MaysonL 11y ago

The brain is also quite resilient. I got shot in the head a few decades ago (.22, luckily) with skull fracture and moderate brain damage – mainly a large hole in my visual field, with occasional visual migraines. Intellectually, I seem to have mainly lost a few steps as far as 3d visualizations are concerned, otherwise still about +3 sd IQ.

farresito 11y ago
Glad to hear you are doing so well! Yes, I completely agree with you the power of the brain to heal itself is amazing. I'm also quite excited by what things are coming in the next ten or twenty years. A good diet probably does wonders, too. I've been suffering from health issues for the past four years. That's why I'm interested in the brain (I suffer from extreme brain fog, and by extreme I really mean extreme; I can't have a conversation with anyone face to face, and I even have some issues when chatting with people. It takes a long time to really think about what I need to say. I still cannot understand how I'm managing to go through college).