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[ihatesnow]

https://news.harvard...ecades-roll-by/

[kench]

Interesting that the target of the new study is the anterior midcingulate cortex.

 

We have a study going on now. From the super-agers’ work, we know that a particular brain region is not specific to memory but contributes to it in important ways through maintaining effort in challenging tasks: the anterior midcingulate cortex. The study is a clinical trial using noninvasive brain stimulation that induces neuroplasticity. The hope is that inducing neuroplasticity will improve the function of this brain region and, by strengthening the function of this brain region, we expect to see improvement in cognition. We’re targeting a brain network that is important for memory in typical older adults to see whether we can actually improve their abilities, mitigate their memory decline, make them super-agers.

 

We’re targeting the key super-aging region, the anterior midcingulate cortex. It is a region that we and others have seen as being thicker in all super-agers. This is an important region because it’s not just an additional memory region, it integrates information from different parts of the brain. It is important for attention, for executive function, for motivation, for all of these processes that contribute to persistence when things get difficult. We had another study in which we talked about this region as being “the tenacious brain.” So by stimulating this region, we hope to increase all those factors that contribute to superior memory. We’ll do fMRI both before and after stimulation, because we want to see whether it does indeed increase these “tenacious” functions of the brain.

 

 

[Mind]

Please keep everyone up to date on the research as it progresses. Very interesting.