Making Our Minds Last a Lifetime

Cognitive therapies, supplements and activities are the key ingredients in keeping the brain fit and fighting the aging process.

By Katherine Greider, Jill Neimark, published on November 01, 1996 - last reviewed on October 01, 2009

While it may not be possible to completely age-proof our brains, a brave new world of anti-aging research shows that our gray matter may be far more flexible than we thought. So no one, no matter how old, has to lose their mind.

The brain has often been called the three-pound universe. It's our most powerful and mysterious organ, the seat of the self, laced with as many billions of neurons as the galaxy has stars. No wonder the mere notion of an aging, failing brain—and the prospect of memory loss, confusion, and the unraveling of our personality—is so terrifying. About a third of all people age 60 and over have recall problems that are noticeable to them and measurable with testing. At least a quarter of people age 85 and up suffer from dementia—the loss of memory and cognitive function and an inability to understand words, carry out motor activities, and recognize or identify objects. As Mark Williams, M.D., author of The American Geriatrics Society's Complete Guide to Aging and Health, says, "The fear of dementia is stronger than the fear of death itself."

Yet the degeneration of the brain is far from inevitable. "Its design features are such that it should continue to function for a lifetime," says Zaven Khachaturian, Ph.D., director of the Alzheimer's Association's Ronald and Nancy Reagan Research Institute. "There's no reason to expect it to deteriorate with age, even though many of us are living longer lives." In fact, scientists' view of the brain's potential is rapidly changing, according to Stanford University neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky, Ph.D. "Thirty-five years ago we thought Alzheimer's disease was a dramatic version of normal aging. Now we realize it's a disease with a distinct pathology. In fact, some people simply don't experience any mental decline, so we've begun to study them." Antonio Damasio, M.D., Ph.D., head of the Department of Neurology at the University of Iowa and author of Descartes' Error, concurs. "Older people can continue to have extremely rich and healthy mental lives."

Successful Aging

So what's the secret to keeping our brains agile and fit? Activity seems to be in fact, mental and physical challenges are both strongly connected to cerebral fitness. This finding springs in large part from a decade of research sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation Network on Successful Aging. Fifteen scientists across the nation have been studying the genetic, psychological, social, and environmental factors that contribute to mental fitness. In one study, Marilyn Albert, Ph.D., of Harvard Medical School, and colleagues from Yale, Duke, and Brandeis Universities and the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine examined 1,192 healthy and mentally fit individuals between the ages of 70 and 80. Twenty-two different variables were measured. "We looked at them in great detail," Albert says, "measuring everything from their blood pressure and cholesterol levels to psychiatric symptoms and whether they smoked."

The seniors were tested in 1988 and again in 1991. Four factors were found to be related to their mental fitness: levels of education and physical activity, lung function, and feelings of self-efficacy. "Each of these elements alters the way our brain functions," says Albert, who hypothesizes that regular exercise may actually stimulate blood flow to the brain and nerve growth, both of which create more densely branched neurons, rendering the neurons stronger and better able to resist disease. Moderate aerobic exercise, including long brisk walks and frequently climbing stairs, will accomplish this.

Animal studies confirm that both mental and physical activity boost brain fitness. At the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology in Urbana, Illinois, psychologist William Greenough, Ph.D., let some rats play with a profusion of toys. These rodents developed about 25 percent more connections between their neurons than did rats that didn't get any mentally stimulating recreation. In addition, rats that exercised on a treadmill developed more capillaries in specific parts of their brains than did their sedentary counterparts. This increased the blood flow to their brains.

Education also seems to enhance brain function. People who have challenged themselves with at least a college education may actually stimulate the neurons in their brains. Moreover, native intelligence may protect our brains. It's possible that smart people begin life with a greater number of neurons, and therefore have a greater reserve to fall back on if some begin to fail. "If you have a lot of neurons and keep them busy, you may be able to tolerate more damage to your brain before it shows," says Peter Davies, M.D., of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York. That may explain why the progression of Alzheimer's disease in people who have big heads—craniums with a circumference of more than 24 inches—is slower. These people may simply have more brain tissue and more neurons.

Early linguistic ability also seems to help our brains later in life. A study in the New England Journal of Medicine (1996) looked at 93 elderly nuns and examined the autobiographies they had written 60 years earlier, just as they were joining a convent. The nuns whose essays were complex and dense with ideas remained sharp into their eighties and nineties.