Therapies: Bench Presses for Older People's Brains
By: Eric Nagourney
New York Times, February 26, 2002
Teaching people memorization strategies that can
encourage the brain to work more effectively may help reduce the memory
loss that often accompanies aging, researchers say.
Writing in the current issue of Neuron, researchers
said that volunteers given memorization tips — somewhat like those a
sales agent uses to remember customers' names — could be seen using
their brains differently on functional magnetic resonance imaging scans.
The lead author, Dr. Randy Buckner of the Howard
Hughes Medical Institute at Washington University in St. Louis, said the
technique seemed to help people who, as they aged, became less adept at
calling the appropriate parts of their brains into action when an
intellectual challenge arose.
The problem, the authors said, could be seen when
M.R.I. exams were given to 62 volunteers, some in their 20's and the rest
in their 70's and 80's, who were asked to memorize words. "The older
adults did not recruit the critical frontal regions as much as the younger
adults," Dr. Buckner said.
But when the elderly volunteers were told not just to
memorize a word but to make an association with it — deciding, for
example, whether it was abstract or concrete — their memories improved,
and the M.R.I. showed different parts of the brain at work.
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