Dr Jenny Brockis

A reminder of what matters to …

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 05:32:03 +0000

A reminder of what matters to try and defer Alzheimer’s http://t.co/T5bNPhz0

What creates happiness at work…

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:19:54 +0000

What creates happiness at work RT @HarvardBiz – Transform Your Employees into Passionate Advocates – Rob Markey – HBR: http://t.co/VSYMy8Fn

It’s always about what we beli…

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 01:03:17 +0000

It’s always about what we believe in Mind over matter: Patients’ perceptions of illness make a difference: http://t.co/PFsxdIML via @AddThis

What is healthy food? Global H…

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 02:17:09 +0000

What is healthy food? Global Health Food: Nielsen Survey Reveals Food Attitudes Around The World http://t.co/xzBYZ28I via @HuffingtonPost

Monthly mewsletter – http://t….

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 05:33:29 +0000

Monthly mewsletter – http://t.co/uNmxdEhP

Taking care of our brain: we need to start in our forties

solutions — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:18:16 +0000

As we reach our forties and fifties, we start to notice a few changes with our brain. We forget things more easily, we experience more “tip of the tongue moments” and find it harder to stay focused or on task. We put it down to the fact that our speed of mental processing is slowing down. We may even have a couple of fleeting worrying thoughts that our brain might be showing the first signs of actual cognitive decline.

One of the biggest fears people express about ageing, is the loss of our mental faculties. That loss of that of course, has a significant impact on our ability to remain self-caring and independent.

Until now, the onset of actual cognitive decline has been thought to occur in our sixties. The clinical onset of Alzheimer’s disease typically occurs around age 65 or older, although it is well recognized that the actual condition slowly and silently develops over the preceding couple of decades. Brain scans can now show the pathological changes in younger brains, before the clinical signs of disease.
Those showing the greatest amount of pathological change in their brains are also known to be at greatest risk of developing clinical signs of dementia in later life.

Findings from a couple of studies (including a longitudinal study from Seattle, which has been following a group of 500 individuals since 1956) have suggested that cognitive decline did not start before the age of 60.
Those findings have now been challenged by a new study recently published in the British Medical Journal which has found that the age of onset of cognitive decline may be significantly earlier than previously thought: actually starting in our mid forties.

This study of 10308 men and women civil servants aged 45 to 70 years from London UK was set up to examine whether different age groups showed differing levels of cognitive decline over a ten-year period. The group underwent tests of memory, reasoning, vocabulary, phonemic and semantic fluency in three different assessments over the ten-year period.

The results of the study showed the following:

Between the age of 65 and 70, men on average showed a -9.6% decline in cognition,
women -7.4%. This was not unexpected.

However results of the younger age group age 45 to 49 also showed evidence of cognitive decline, albeit at a lower percentage; -3.5% cognitive decline for men and -3.6% for women.

The implications of this study suggest that we need to be taking a much closer note of how we are performing in midlife. Along with midlife obesity, high blood pressure and high cholesterol, our midlife cognitive function appears to be very important in determining how we will fare as we age.

If cognitive decline is picked up in our midlife, then at least that provides some valuable time to be putting into place specific strategies to to minimize any further decline and attempt to build cognitive reserve. What we don’t know (and requires further study) is whether midlife cognitive decline will lead to actual dementia – however it would seem prudent to do whatever we can, to keep our brains intact.

So what is the best thing we need to be doing in our midlife?

It’s all about maintain and improving brain function by adopting brain healthy lifestyles:

Eat healthily with a wide variety of green vegetables, fruit, lean proteins, seeds and nuts and keeping away from pies, pasties, cakes and biscuits, hot chips and fried foods.

Maintain a positive attitude to life. Being social engaged and active helps to keep stress levels down and stave off anxiety and depression.

Use your brain to learn new skills. Aim to include mental activities every day that are outside our usual habits. Card games, Sudoku, brain games, and apps are all useful.

Move your body. One of the biggest things we can do for our brain is to ensure we spend a minimum of thirty minutes every day doing some form of physical exercise – enough to get the heart rate up.

So next time you have a memory lapse, forget an appointment or lose your keys while it might simply a slower speed of processing, it could be an indication of a more serious reduction in your cognitive ability. So rather than ignoring it, be proactive and take the time every day to help restore your mental sharpness. Your brain may depend on it.

Ref:

Singh-Manoux,A.et al Timing of onset of cognitive decline: results from Whitehall 11 prospective cohort study. British Medical Journal 2012; 344 doi: 10.1136/bmj.d7622

Goal Setting and the four bigg…

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 03:53:57 +0000

Goal Setting and the four biggest traps that’ll destroy your motivation (and the one key thing that’ll sustain it). http://t.co/FBOaZ4EN

The Mirror in Us: Mirror Neuro…

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 21:33:22 +0000

The Mirror in Us: Mirror Neurons & Workplace Relationships http://t.co/odgt63Hz via @intentionalcomm

Not all gossip is bad Telling …

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:08:07 +0000

Not all gossip is bad Telling someone else when something really miffs us can have psychological benefits: http://t.co/RCazWlUB via @AddThis

Glial Cells: ugly ducklings or the brain’s mastermind?

solutions — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 03:50:17 +0000

Neurons may not be the superstars we think they are after all. It may be our other brain cells, the glia, the ugly ducklings of the brain, which actually have the really important role.

When you think about brain cells you would normally be thinking about neurons. These are the brain cells involved in transmitting electrical impulses between themselves, releasing a selection of over 300 neurochemicals so that we can all enjoy our thoughts, feelings and actions. We have around 85 billion of them.

But there are an equal number of other brain cells in our heads which up until recently were thought of as merely having a supporting role, providing the glue to bind our brain cells together. Indeed glia comes from the Greek word meaning “glue”. Yet our glial cells are now being revealed to be equal superstars in their own right and studies are now starting to unravel the mystery of what the true role of our glial cells may be.

Welcome to the world of glial cells.

Researchers from the Tel Aviv University have been studying glial cells and have discovered that they are central to our brain’s plasticity: the ability of our brain to form new synaptic connections between other brain cells.
One type of glial cells are called astrocytes and it is these, which appear to be involved in controlling synaptic communication.

Our brain’s plasticity enables us to learn new information, store it and adapt to changing circumstances.

Maurizio de Pitta along with other researchers from the Salk Institute, the University of California and University of Lyon have developed a computer model which incorporates the influence of the glial cells on the transfer of information at the level of the synapse.

The parts of the brain most highly involved in memory and learning are the hippocampus and the cerebral cortex. Perhaps not surprisingly these areas are abundant in glial cells as well as neurons. So much so that for every neuron in these areas there are between two to five glial cells.

So what are these glial cells doing?

The researchers believe that the glial cells work as moderators of the neurochemical information being transported at the synapses
They can either ramp things up to prompt the transfer of information or slow synaptic activity down if the synapses are overactive. The end result? The glial cells basically are orchestrating the transmission of information for optimal brain function.

They do this by “listening in” to the neurons and communicating between themselves using the same neurotransmitter receptors as neurons but without using electrical impulses.

This major difference is that whereas neurons communicate with each other serially through their multitude of synaptic connections, glia communicate more widely like radio waves and at a slower pace than the zippy neurons.

Is this relevant to better understanding certain brain diseases?

Prof Ben-Jacob notes that these findings could have important implications for a number of brain disorders such as epilepsy and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

Glial cells and epilepsy

When a person has an epileptic seizure, the activity of neurons in one location spread and take over the normal activity of other locations This is explained as the glial cells here failing to adequately regulate synaptic transmission.

In other conditions if neuronal activity is noted to be low, the glial cells act to boost transmission of information by maintaining the synaptic plasticity between brain cells.

Glial cells and Alzheimer’s

Douglas Fields asks whether in Alzheimer’s the pathology occurs as a result of a failure of the associated glia to clear waste. These specialised microglia have a particular role in destroying bacteria and by clearing away diseased tissue promoting tissue recovery and repair.

Wolfgang Streit from the University of Florida has noted that the microglia degenerate and become weaker with age. In Alzheimer’s disease much of the early neuronal loss occurs in the area of the hippocampus. Streit has demonstrated that the degeneration of microglia follows a similar pattern leading to the question of whether Alzheimer’s disease is a problem associated with ageing microglia no longer able to perform their usual function of clearing waste such as amyloid.

Glial cells and chronic pain

A number of researchers from the US, Japan and the UK have discovered that both microglia and astrocytes respond to the activity of pain circuits following injury by releasing neurochemicals to support neurons and stimulate healing. What appears to happen in some cases is that the microglia don’t turn off when the healing is complete, a bit like the never ending porridge pot, so the pain circuits continue to fire.

Glial cells and mental illness

Research into depression and schizophrenia has shown that these conditions are associated with reduced numbers of glial cells – oligodendrocytes and astrocytes. Because astrocytes are associated with regulating the amount of neurotransmitters at synapses, having lower levels of these glial cells may be a contributor to these conditions. It has been proposed that targeting these glia may provide a new method of treatment.

As this fascinating research continues to unravel the mysteries of the true function of glial cells, we may have to change our previous perspective that our brain’s super plasticity is based on neuronal activity alone. It appears that we need our glial cells to keep our neurons on task and efficient – a bit like a master coach.

Refs:
Maurizio De Pittà, Vladislav Volman, Hugues Berry, Eshel Ben-Jacob. A Tale of Two Stories: Astrocyte Regulation of Synaptic Depression and Facilitation. PLoS Computational Biology, 2011; 7 (12): e1002293 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002293

Scientific American Mind: R. Douglas Fields The Hidden Brain May/June 2011 Pages 53 – 57

Dr Jenny Brockis

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