Out with the old, in with the… wait, what was I talking about? <\/p>
We know that the brain undergoes significant structural, functional and metabolic changes with age, with associated alterations in cognition and behaviour. A\u00a0systematic review<\/a>\u00a0was recently published in the journal\u00a0Psychophysiology, in which researchers from Australia\u00a0looked at\u00a0144 studies and summarised how the connectivity of the human brain changes over our lifetimes.<\/p>\n They found that after the age of 40, the brain starts to undergo a rewiring that results in diverse networks becoming more integrated and connected. They suggest that this results in less flexible thinking, lower response inhibition,\u00a0and reduced\u00a0verbal and numeric\u00a0reasoning.<\/p>\n While\u00a0this may be compelling, it is worth noting that these types of studies are based on results from an imaging technique called functional MRI<\/a>. These allow neuroscientists to observe the parts of subjects\u2019 brains that \u2018light up\u2019 in response to stimuli or when simply at rest.<\/p>\n However, we can\u2019t really be sure that these are responsible for the changes in cognition that we see at the time \u2013 there might be a link, but it is difficult to prove.\u00a0Looking at the data from the study, the \u2018restructuring\u2019 is fairly gradual, not a dramatic step-change each decade as might be suggested.<\/p>\n So maybe there is not a \u2018great restructuring\u2019, and we don\u2019t know exactly how this translates to cognition, but this review adds weight to the finding that there are changes in the brain that occur with ageing<\/a>.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/strong><\/p>\n Asked by: Billy Evans, Newport<\/strong><\/p>\n To submit your questions email us at questions@sciencefocus.com (don\u2019t forget to include your name and location)<\/em><\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n Out with the old, in with the… wait, what was I talking about? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":26289,"template":"","categories":[30],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"2"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/04\/yes-your-brain-will-probably-experience-a-great-restructuring-after-you-turn-40.jpg",1200,511,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/04\/yes-your-brain-will-probably-experience-a-great-restructuring-after-you-turn-40-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/04\/yes-your-brain-will-probably-experience-a-great-restructuring-after-you-turn-40-300x128.jpg",300,128,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/04\/yes-your-brain-will-probably-experience-a-great-restructuring-after-you-turn-40-768x327.jpg",768,327,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/04\/yes-your-brain-will-probably-experience-a-great-restructuring-after-you-turn-40-1024x436.jpg",800,341,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/04\/yes-your-brain-will-probably-experience-a-great-restructuring-after-you-turn-40.jpg",1200,511,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/04\/yes-your-brain-will-probably-experience-a-great-restructuring-after-you-turn-40.jpg",1200,511,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Out with the old, in with the... wait, what was I talking about?","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/26288"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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