A new study shows that drinking a daily dose of wild blueberry juice improved the memory of older adults with age-related memory problems. It’s the first study to show this potential benefit of blueberries in those at risk for dementia.
“The findings of this preliminary study suggest that moderate term blueberry supplementation can confer neurocognitive benefit,” write researcher Robert Krikorian, of the University of Cincinnati Academic Health Center, and colleagues in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Researchers say blueberries contain a wealth of phytochemicals that have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects.

(WebMD, 1/21/10)

Persons with higher levels of leptin, a protein hormone produced by fat cells and involved in the regulation of appetite, may have an associated reduced incidence of Alzheimer disease and dementia, according to a study in the December 16 issue of JAMA.

Previous studies have shown that overweight and obesity in mid-life are associated with poorer cognitive function in the general population and an increased risk of dementia. There has been evidence that leptin exerts additional functions on the brain outside the hypothalamus (a region of the brain that controls body temperature, hunger, and thirst), according to background information in the article.

The researchers found that higher leptin levels were associated with a lower incidence of  dementia and AD. The incidence of dementia decreased gradually across increasing levels of leptin: a person with a baseline leptin level in the lowest quartile group had a 25 percent risk of developing AD after 12 years of follow-up, whereas the corresponding risk for a person in the top quartile group was only 6 percent.

“These findings are consistent with recent experimental data indicating that leptin improves memory function in animals through direct effects on the hippocampus and strengthens the evidence that leptin is a hormone with a broad set of actions in the central nervous system. Due to the exploratory character of the present analyses, we did not adjust for multiple comparisons and acknowledge that our findings require confirmation in independent samples,” the authors write.

“If our findings are confirmed by others, leptin levels in older adults may serve as one of several possible biomarkers for healthy brain aging and, more importantly, may open new pathways for possible preventive and therapeutic intervention. Further exploration of the molecular and cellular basis for the observed association may expand our understanding of the pathophysiology underlying brain aging and the development of AD.”
(JAMA 2009;302[23]:2565-2572. )

Scientists in Germany found that increased physical activity was associated with a lower incidence of dementia. In this study, researchers recruited 3,485 elderly residents in Bavaria and asked them about their physical activity. None of the participants had dementia at the start of the analysis, but after two years of follow-up, researchers found that those who exercised at least three times a week were half as likely to have developed dementia compared with people who reported no physical activity. Based on his results, says lead author Dr. Thorleif Etgen, a professor of psychiatry and psychotherapy at München University, “It doesn’t make a big difference if you have moderate or high physical activity. The important message is that you do any activity. And even if you start late in life, at 60 or 70, there is a benefit, for it’s never too late to start exercising.”

The key words are “moderate or high,” according to another study published Monday in the Archives. Dr. Qi Sun, a researcher at Harvard School of Public Health, analyzed 13,000 women participating in the Nurses’ Health Study and found that when it came to exercise, more was better. Compared with women who jogged for 20 minutes a week, those who jogged three hours a week or walked briskly for five hours a week were 76% more likely to age successfully, free of chronic illnesses such as cancer and heart disease, as well as mental and physical impairment.

Sun’s group found that this benefit occurred across all weight divisions, meaning that even among those who were overweight or obese, women who exercised improved their odds of aging without chronic disease. The effects may apply across different age groups as well; the women were at least 60 years old by the time they enrolled in the study, and while Sun was not able to determine how long they had been exercising prior to that, the results suggest that the health benefits are not limited to the young.

That was the same message of the final exercise paper in the journal, by researchers at University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany. In this trial, a group of 246 elderly women were randomly assigned to an 18-month exercise regimen or a wellness program. The women participating in the four times weekly exercise sessions, which involved aerobics and balance and muscle training, improved their bone mineral density by nearly 2%. The women in the wellness group, which focused on walking, muscle relaxation and breathing skills, had a 0.33% increase in bone density over the same time period. Perhaps more important, participants in the exercise group saw no increase in their risk of experiencing a fracture-causing fall, compared with a 66% higher risk in the control group.

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Understanding exactly how the brain encodes and stores memories is one of the central, unsolved mysteries in neuroscience. Currently the most widely accepted theory is long-term potentiation (LTP)—the lasting communication established between two neurons when they are stimulated simultaneously.

As a person processes an event, two neurons pass information through a small space called a synapse. This chemical conversation triggers an intricate cascade, inviting nearby neurons to fire and ultimately creating a network of connections with varying strengths. Afterward, this pattern of connections, or memory, remains within the network of neurons that processed the event.

Although many areas of the brain contain synapses capable of creating strong patterns of connectivity, the hippocampus is a particularly favorable spot for recording memories. This brain region plays a critical role in learning new information, forming spatial memories and storing short-term memories as long-term ones.

Memories formed with the hippo­campus are especially rich because they integrate input from several areas of the brain, and the ­hippocampus contains densely packed layers of neurons. In addition, damage to this region and nearby areas causes profound and perm­anent amnesia—an inability to store new memories or to recall old ones—and is observed in patients who have Alz­heimer’s disease.

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LONDON – Scientists have discovered a new source for the generation of nerve cells in the brain.

Professor Magdalena Gotz of Helmholtz Zentrum Munchen and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat (LMU) Munich and colleagues have discovered progenitor cells, which can form new glutamatergic neurons following injury to the cerebral cortex.

Particularly in Alzheimer’s disease, nerve cell degeneration plays a crucial role. In the future, new therapeutic options may possibly be derived from steering the generation and/or migration mechanism, according to the researchers.

Until only a few years ago, neurogenesis – the process of nerve cell development – was considered to be impossible in the adult brain.

Then researchers discovered regions in the forebrain in humans in which new nerve cells can be generated throughout life. These so-called GABAergic cells use gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), a neurotransmitter of the central nervous system.

Now, the research team, led by Gotz, has taken a closer look at this brain region in the mouse model. They found that even in the forebrain, there are other nerve cells that are regularly generated – the so-called glutamatergic nerve cells, which use glutamate as neurotransmitter.

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What is the single fastest growing segment of the United States population: people over a hundred years old.

Why do some people live so long? For years, medical researchers have been studying this select group, identifying some key factors to a long life. Now, a growing body of research is suggesting that longevity isn’t just linked to good genes and a healthy lifestyle; it’s also tied to cultivating a positive, resilient attitude toward life. These results validate a simple idea: that centenarians can teach us how to live not just longer lives, but better ones.

At the fore of this research is the New England Centenarian Study (NECS), which has enrolled more than 1,500 centenarians from around the world over the past 15 years. The study’s director, Thomas Perls, says these participants dispel the belief that the older someone gets, the sicker he or she becomes. Instead, he says, “the older you get, the healthier you’ve been.” In other words, people who demonstrate exceptional longevity tend to have had a lifelong history of good health.

Indeed, people who die in their 70s or 80s are plagued by degenerative illnesses in the years before their death; in contrast, Perls has found that nearly two thirds of centenarians either delay the onset of diseases such as heart disease, stroke, and diabetes—or escape them altogether. Plus, a substantial proportion of centenarians who survive such age-related illnesses do so without developing physical disabilities, enabling them to remain socially, mentally, and physically active. As a result, in a culture that romanticizes youth, Perls argues that centenarians embody “a thoroughly optimistic view of aging”—one that shows that prolonging life and enjoying it go hand-in-hand.

How do they do it?

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The idea that the adult brain changes with experience was once a radical idea, but it is now well accepted that certain areas—say, the motor cortex, when learning a new physical skill—can grow new neurons or create stronger connections.

Now scientists report that the brain is even more mutable than suspected. Thanks to an unconventional research technique, neuroscientists have found the first physical proof that new experiences and information have wide-ranging effects throughout both hemispheres of the brain, rather than just creating connections in one discrete area.

“We have learned that what we call neuronal plasticity isn’t exclusive to individual synapses or even the neurons where they contact but rather occurs throughout the functional network in which synapses and neurons are embedded,” Canals says. “Those networks are absent in brain slices, so they couldn’t be studied before.”

By showing how activity in the hippocampus causes widespread changes in brain structure, Canals says the findings could explain why new memories are at first dependent on the hippocampus but can eventually be recalled without triggering that part of the brain at all.

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