Do Mature Brains Really Shrink With Age?
Conventional medical wisdom says that as a person gets older, their mature brain shrinks – but some new research might just change the way we think about the aging brain. The idea that healthy older brains are so much smaller than young brains comes from earlier studies that unknowingly used people who had undetected, slowly developing brain disease that would have been killing off cells – accounting for the smaller size. Expecting that it’s normal for the brain to shrink with the years has given rise to the myth that mental decline must also be a natural, inevitable part of aging. This latest study, appearing in the September 2009 issue of the American Psychology Association’s Neuropsychology changes all that. Participants for this work came from Holland’s longstanding Maastricht Aging Study. Using behavioral data collected from 1994 to 2005, with MRI scans taken between 1997 and 1999, the researchers divided participants into two groups – 35 people who were in good cognitive health (
