Neuroscientist Tony Wyss-Coray, PhD, has spent 20 years unearthing and examining various molecules with neuroprotective and neurodegenerative properties. These molecules are found in or on different cell types in the brain and on the blood vessels abutting it, or floating in the blood and the cerebrospinal fluid that bathes it. And they become increasingly important as we age.
Wyss-Coray and his colleagues have turned up substances in blood that can accelerate or slow down the brain-aging clock. They’ve identified proteins on blood-vessel surfaces through which some of these molecules can act on the brain, despite the existence of the blood-brain barrier. He’s even shown that older mice getting young mouse cerebrospinal fluid look and act younger.
I asked Wyss-Coray, the D. H. Chen Distinguished Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences and the director of the Phil and Penny Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience, to tie together his findings in the field of cognitive rejuvenation.
Brain stimulation leads to long-lasting improvements in memory
After four days of non-invasive electrical stimulation, trial participants were better at recalling information for up to a month.
People’s ability to remember fades with age — but one day, researchers might be able to use a simple, drug-free method to buck this trend.
In a study published on 22 August in Nature Neuroscience1, Robert Reinhart, a cognitive neuroscientist at Boston University in Massachusetts, and his colleagues demonstrate that zapping the brains of adults aged over 65 with weak electrical currents repeatedly over several days led to memory improvements that persisted for up to a month.
Previous studies have suggested that long-term memory and ‘working’ memory, which allows the brain to store information temporarily, are controlled by distinct mechanisms and parts of the brain. Drawing on this research, the team showed that stimulating the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex — a region near the front of the brain — with high-frequency electrical currents improved long-term memory, whereas stimulating the inferior parietal lobe, which is further back in the brain, with low-frequency electrical currents boosted working memory.
“Their results look very promising,” says Ines Violante, a neuroscientist at the University of Surrey in Guildford, UK. “They really took advantage of the cumulative knowledge within the field.”
Memory Boosting Power of Flavanols in Aging Adults
Summary: A new study establishes the critical role of flavanols, nutrients found in certain fruits and vegetables, in mitigating age-related memory loss.
The research shows a correlation between flavanol intake and scores on memory tests among older adults. A remarkable improvement was observed in individuals over 60 with low-flavanol diets, after these dietary components were replenished.
This supports the emerging understanding that specific nutrients are vital for maintaining optimal health in the aging brain.
Key Facts:
The study is the first to conclusively show that a diet low in flavanols contributes to age-related memory loss.
Supplementing flavanols in mildly flavanol-deficient adults over 60 significantly improved their performance in memory tests.
The research supports the theory that the aging brain, much like a developing one, requires specific nutrients for optimal health.
Source: Columbia University
Full Paper (open source):
Dietary flavanols restore hippocampal-dependent memory in older adults with lower diet quality and lower habitual flavanol consumption
Phytonutrients for the win! I did two podcasts with Jed Fahey about Phytonutrients…he is famous for sulforaphane but is a leading light on all things plant nutrients.
My intuition tells me there is more to healthspan and longevity than what can be tested in ITP experiments. I’ll work on improving my thinking on this point, but for now….
“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
I think of aging as sort of “Project Management” - where the total length of the project is dictated by the “Critical Path items”. In lifespan terms, this means any biological system in our body that by itself (or as a cascade of signaling factors) can limit lifespan. These are the critical path items in “project lifespan”. Of course in this project, we’re trying to maximize the length of time (vs. the normal effort to minimize the project length of time).
The function of the non-critical path items matters to the quality, though perhaps not to the quantity of lifespan. And yes - ITP is very simplistic in terms of only measuring whether total lifespan is increased. Overtime I’m sure more granular measures will be developed and measured.
This is a nice mental model. I think about this topic in terms of priorities…seeking the 20% of efforts that will have the 80% of benefit (such as solving the one thing most likely to kill you), but critical path is a bit better. I’ll borrow that.
One big problem, according to Matt Kaeberlein is that science doesn’t have a way to measure healthspan because we don’t have a definition that allows for measurement. I’d argue that a poor measurement that moves us in the right direction is better than no measurement.