Declining brain power causes, symptoms and brain training

Declining brain power in old age?

Until just a few decades ago, it was a matter of course that brain performance declined in old age. New findings from the neurosciences prove today that such a "natural law" does not exist. Whether and how the performance of the brain diminishes, remains stable or even increases, however, depends heavily on social factors and training - the human brain is a social organ.

"Youth has the prerogative of radicalism, with life comes the experience of life." (Prof. Dr. Ingolf Ahlers)

contents

• Declining brain power in old age?
• A complex system
• The development of the brain
• Selective memory
• Substance loss of the brain
• What happens to our brain in old age??
• "Typical" signs of aging
• Age or social environment?
• The library is getting bigger
• Passing on traditions
• Indirect effects of age
• brain training

A complex system

The human brain is an extremely complicated system that is constantly changing. The factors that influence this development include the genetic basis, psyche and body, the social environment, ie relationships, relatives, friends, community and society as well as the natural environment, ie climate, weather, air, forests, seas etc. , the artificial environment such as technology and science and the world view, ie philosophy, ethics, ideology, religion, etc. All these factors relate to each other, and the brain develops in their interactions.

The brain is an extremely complex system whose evolution is influenced by a variety of factors. (Image: eranicle / fotolia.com)

The development of the brain

The human brain develops before birth. Already in the first three months, the brain of the embryo grows. It is extremely sensitive at this early stage. Infectious diseases of the mother can damage the brain of the unborn child, the same applies to harmful substances.

The brain is a "super organ," an extreme development similar to the trunk of the elephant or the brain of the giraffe. Unlike the brains of reptiles, it is far from finished at birth; Its complexity and size mean that it grows and develops after birth. This is how many neural pathways develop only in the two years of life, only now the nerve fibers get thicker, only step by step the toddler reacts to more and more environmental stimuli.

While a horse foal stands and runs on his own legs shortly after birth, a person takes up to two years to go alone. Human memory even develops until the age of five, which also explains why we have few real memories of our first time in the world.

Social behavior and slow, so logical thinking develop children only with the end of this first embossing phase. Both form in the interplay of biological development and the social environment. Infants undergo a "magical phase" in which the inner experience and outer environment are not yet separated for them.

In short, that's the time when they still believe in Santa Claus. Between the fifth and the seventh year of life, systematic thinking emerges. It starts, for example, with six-year-olds wondering how Santa Claus can come to all the children one evening, where the gifts are made, if Santa Claus has a special vehicle, etc. In this evolution of logical thinking, too linguistic, spatial and mathematical skills.

We speak of the "defiance phase" of three-year-olds. Now the ego consciousness is developing. The young person realizes that he is a person and that this ego has different needs and interests than other people.

Between the fifth and the seventh year of life, systematic thinking emerges. (Image: sebra / fotolia.com)

Selective memory

The brain works selectively. It only stores what we use and / or train regularly. Meanwhile, the long-term memory remains a "stockpile" of potentially useful experiences, images, and patterns that we can resort to in an emergency-that is, when we activate certain stimuli.

Memories are not objective, but earmarked. The patterns that are stored in the synapses do not reflect an actual process, but are recognized as useful storylines. We catch ourselves, reading old diaries, that the reality described therein looked different than the stories we tell about that time. This is not necessarily because we are lying, so consciously reshaping experiences, but that the brain renders our memories so that they fit into our respective life issues.

This applies in the positive as well as in the negative. A person suffering from depression in the clinical sense will find in his "past" time and again confirmations that for him a "life in hell" was inevitable; a bipolar in his manic phase, however, always finds "evidence" that he is "chosen to save the world".

Substance loss of the brain

Up to the age of 12, the cell bodies and connections between the nerves increase continuously. The brain is bubbling over in front of ever new synapses. By about mid-20, the synapses then form, and from the 40th Age, we reduce brain cells.

The prefrontal cortex forms until the second half of the Twenty somethings. The psychologist Kristine Walhovd from Oslo found that the brain regions are the first to age, and they are the last to develop. In particular, the function of the frontal brain subsides, and this controls the attention; In addition, the hippocampus shrinks, where the long-term memory is located.

The nerves that connect the regions of the brain generally increase into the '40s, then they go back. This affects above all the speed with which we process mental challenges, but not necessarily our general ability to do so. The communication between the individual "tasks" of the brain is no longer smooth.

From the age of 40, our brain cells slowly start to degrade again. (Image: goanovi / fotolia.com)

What happens to our brain in old age??

As you age, the density of synapses decreases, as does the amount of myelin-wrapped nerve fibers. For this, the density of neurofibrils increases, and thus accumulates a protein that leads in greater quantities to the death of nerve cells.

The brains of people who have excellent memory at a high age have smaller accumulations of these "balls" than people whose brains age normally.

"Typical" signs of aging

Typical of an "aging brain" is that older people have problems memorizing and / or perceiving different things at the same time. The short-term memory subsides. We have to create a memo for the daily routine, whereas we were able to remember corresponding points beforehand.

That's no reason to panic. It can be natural signs of wear. Nevertheless, we should not accept it as a "natural law", because then we promote this process, firstly, if it is natural aging, and secondly, we may fall into the trap of excluding other factors that are at most indirect with age.

Mental problems, medications, disorders of the metabolism and circulation, depression, stress and loneliness are also possible causes of "age-related absent-mindedness". Even a wrong diet can cause supposedly age-related problems with the short-term memory.

Age or social environment?

For example, when retired, many people lose the usual daily rhythm that the synapses in the brain have targeted. Stimuli to activate patterns in the synapses as the daily discussions with colleagues in the workplace accounts.

Many older people lose their usual daily rhythm with the beginning of the pension. This can, for example, cause the overview of the days of the week to get confused. (Image: highwaystarz / fotolia.com)

For example, if a middle-aged pensioner forgets which weekday is or does not remember a conversation he had conducted the previous week, it may be because the stored patterns in the synapses lack vertices to be in action to step. At work it was necessary to know whether it is Monday or Sunday, when every day is "Sunday", that hardly matters.

If an old person increasingly forgets what he wanted to do, it may be because he has reconditioned himself in his life's tasks, and the brain classifies things as "not important.".

The library is getting bigger

Are we dumbered with age? The linguist Michael Ramscar from Tübingen questions that. According to him, not the performance of the brain decreases, but the old brain accesses a much larger knowledge store. It takes more time to process a large amount of data. If someone analyzes three dozen primary and secondary sources for an article, it takes longer than just summarizing a book.

Therefore, old people would not be forgetful, but would have to process a huge treasure trove of experiences, so Ramscar.

At the same time, according to Ramscar, older people can better organize and retrieve existing knowledge. In the study developed by his team, young adults spotted pairs of words regardless of whether they made sense or not, whereas older adults, on the other hand, found the right pairs of words.

If we assume that the human brain develops as a social organ, the aging processes correspond to the tasks in the phases of life. When the forebrain develops into the mid-1920s, and attention decreases in later years, this meets the needs of young people "going out into the world".

In other words, the synapses still pick up a lot of new information and make it into patterns that change over and over again. Man is not yet determined in his life's journey. New experiences are added, he changes his life perspectives. For the elderly, the challenge is not so much to gain new experiences over and over again, but to organize and make meaningful use of the experience already gained.

He does not constantly learn new things, but draws lessons from what he has learned. And one lesson is to distinguish the important from the unimportant.

Passing on traditions

Maybe this is a special adaptation of the primate brain. Even in primates other than humans grandmothers and grandfathers play an essential role in the cohesion of the group. They no longer produce offspring themselves, but pass on their knowledge to the children and uphold traditions.

The stored knowledge in the old primate brain and the extreme receptivity of the young primate brain were therefore associated with each other. Old females and males who help shape the "upbringing" of the young are not only found in humans, but also in gorillas, green monkeys or rhesus macaques.

In humans, these peculiarities of the brain of old people play a special role. To a large extent, human societies exist through the dissemination of information. Humans reproduce themselves to a great extent spiritually. In many indigenous cultures, man "in the forecourt of death" is considered to be the one who passes on the tradition: Only now that he can no longer bear any physical descendants does he pass on his "spiritual seed".

Indirect effects of age

The human brain is not an isolated organ, and "age-related signs of wear and tear" on the brain are often only indirectly related to age. For one thing, old people are vulnerable to diseases that can affect the brain but are not in the narrow sense of the brain itself; on the other hand, the social environment and training plays an essential role.

The brain needs training, and experiences stored in the unconscious only activate it when there is a stimulus for it. The more intense our social relationships are, the more we can build on stored patterns and develop new patterns as we age.

Many older people retire and are less stimulated by the lack of social contacts for "brain work". (Image: De Visu / fotolia.com)

A problem many old people face is that they are increasingly socially isolated. However, those who sit lonely in their apartment and look at the photo wallpaper inevitably receive less social input than someone who, in many friendships, through acquaintances, partners and relatives, is forced to "exert his brain". But that has little to do with biological age.

When physical discomfort increases with age, it reinforces the "aging process" of the brain. It is no longer easy to swing on the bike and make a lap of the Statdpark.

Now the everyday stimuli of the environment are lost, the perceptions and inspirations of the brain are broken: the scent of apple blossoms on the riverbank, the rain on the face, the sound of muddy earth on the shoes, also the randomly heard conversations of the joggers, the chance conversation with a neighbor , who carries out her dog. So the brain gets less sensory stimuli and in the long run it starves to death. This is not due to the biological age, but to the living conditions.

Then old people suffer more from complaints of circulation and metabolism, and since the brain depends on blood and body's own substances, hormones and vitamins, such problems directly affect its performance. Old people also often have sleep problems. Irregular sleep, sleep deprivation, or sleep problems also reduce brain performance.

brain training

The bookstores overflow with pseudoscientific counselors, according to which we would use only 10% of our brain, coupled with the brainwashing, how we could develop "super brains", if we follow only the de facto religious instructions.

That's nonsense. The human brain is never inactive, not even while asleep, and the areas of the brain are busy. It is important, then, how we use the anyway active brain. What matters most to old people is social relationships: our brains interact with other people and learn from communicating with other people to shape that learning experience.

The brain can be trained at any age, for example by discovering and exploring new areas. (Image: pikselstock / fotolia.com)

It is very important to develop meaningful life concepts in old age. The "aging of the brain" can also be a reaction to futility. This is not a caring concern, but solid biological facts: The brain releases neurotransmitters, which dissolve old structures and make new solutions possible. When an old person leaves work, the brain works on a new information and data network. But if there are too few new stimuli, then only a few patterns that we access will necessarily be formed.

The brain can be changed through training, the social environment and the external environment - at any age. These factors relate to each other. A person can train his brain in everyday life only by looking for unfamiliar experiences. They can be quite banal, for example choosing a new route during a daily walk or drinking his coffee in a bar where he has never been before.

The social environment is existential for brain performance in old age. If other people bring us positive feelings, if we receive friendly feedback and honest interest, then our dopamine level rises. When we are well, the brain forms new networks. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)

literature
Peter Düweke: Small History of Brain Research. From Descartes to Eccles. 2001
Michael Hagner: Ingenious brains. The history of elite brain research. Munich 2007
Ders .: The spirit at work. Historical studies on brain research. Göttingen 2006
Erhard Oeser: History of Brain Research. Darmstadt 2002.

Left
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