The Ageing Brain

Finalist in the 2020 PROSE Awards This multidisciplinary volume examines the neural mechanisms underlying changes in the aging brain, changes in learning and memory, risk and protective factors, and the assessment and prevention of cognitive decline.

While growing older is inevitable, many of the troubles we associate with aging--including dementia, disability, and an increased dependence on others--are not. The choices we make now can help us to maintain our vitality, a sharp mind, and our independence as we age. Filled with simple, everyday actions we can take to avoid disease, promote vitality, and prevent dementia and late onset Alzheimer's, The Aging Brain is an easy-to-use guide to maintaining brain and body health throughout our lives. Based on solid, up-to-date scientific research, the interventions explained in this book not only prevent progression toward dementia even in those who have already shown mild cognitive impairment, they also reduce disability and depression and keep people living independently longer than those who do not practice these methods. For anyone hoping to slow the aging process, as well as anyone who acts as a caregiver to someone at risk of or already beginning to suffer from dementia and other age-related diseases, this book offers a hopeful, healthy way forward.

Music and the Aging Brain describes brain functioning in aging and addresses the power of music to protect the brain from loss of function and how to cope with the ravages of brain diseases that accompany aging. By studying the power of music in aging through the lens of neuroscience, behavioral, and clinical science, the book explains brain organization and function. Written for those researching the brain and aging, the book provides solid examples of research fundamentals, including rigorous standards for sample selection, control groups, description of intervention activities, measures of health outcomes, statistical methods, and logically stated conclusions. Summarizes brain structures supporting music perception and cognition Examines and explains music as neuroprotective in normal aging Addresses the association of hearing loss to dementia Promotes a neurological approach for research in music as therapy Proposes questions for future research in music and aging

Handbook of the Aging Brain brings together diverse scientific disciplines to cover the most recent research findings in an easy-to-read summary. Scientists and clinicians will find a wide spectrum of subjects including gerontology, neurology, psychology, molecular biology, and cellular biology. The book includes general chapters on the neuroanatomy and neurobiology of the aging brain, and moves on to discussion of specifics including signal transduction, cell death, and specific cellular and neurological changes associated with dementia, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Disease. Other chapters discuss the affect of aging on learning and memory, language, and cognition.

Recognition that aging is not the accumulation of disease, but rather comprises fundamental biological processes that are amenable to experimental study, is the basis for the recent growth of experimental biogerontology. As increasingly sophisticated studies provide greater understanding of what occurs in the aging brain and how these changes occur

Possible new breakthroughs in understanding the aging mind that can be used to benefit older people are now emerging from research. This volume identifies the key scientific advances and the opportunities they bring. For example, science has learned that among older adults who do not suffer from Alzheimer's disease or other dementias, cognitive decline may depend less on loss of brain cells than on changes in the health of neurons and neural networks. Research on the processes that maintain neural health shows promise of revealing new ways to promote cognitive functioning in older people. Research is also showing how cognitive functioning depends on the conjunction of biology and culture. The ways older people adapt to changes in their nervous systems, and perhaps the changes themselves, are shaped by past life experiences, present living situations, changing motives, cultural expectations, and emerging technology, as well as by their physical health status and sensory-motor capabilities. Improved understanding of how physical and contextual factors interact can help explain why some cognitive functions are impaired in aging while others are spared and why cognitive capability is impaired in some older adults and spared in others. On the basis of these exciting findings, the report makes specific recommends that the U.S. government support three major new initiatives as the next steps for research.

When confronted with a neurological or psychiatric disorder in an elderly individual, a clinician or researcher is likely to ask how the processes of ageing have influenced the aetiology and presentation of the disorder, and will impact on its efficient management. There are many urban myths about ageing, and some of these apply to the brain. The reviews included in this book are an attempt to flush out some of these myths, and arm the clinician and general researcher with the empirical facts that can be mustered to substantiate claims about ageing. There are many salient questions: is cognitive change to be expected in an elderly individual? Is this change progressive, relentless and unselective, or is it focal and constrained? Would every person who lived long enough develop Alzheimer’s disease? Do our neurones die as we get old? What happens to the size of the brain and its metabolic activity? How do our hormones change with age? Can anti-oxidants slow or even stop the process of ageing? Are genes important in the ageing brain or is it all in the environment? How much of what we are is due to what we eat? The contributors to this book, each an expert in their field, have addressed some of these questions in a language simple enough for a general reader to understand. The book also deals with some of the most prominent brain disorders of old age - Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, vascular dementia, and depression. The focus is on the impact of ageing on these disorders. The discussions lay out a broad map for the clinician dealing with neuropsychiatric disorders, and the future researcher of brain ageing. In a field in which the developments are too numerous for any one individual to keep pace with, this book presents up-to-date summaries that can be a useful starting point. The field of brain ageing abounds in tabloid science. This book counters this by providing a strong empirical grounding and considered synthesis of the research.

Examines the alterations of cognition, perception, and behavior that occur with healthy brain aging, their mechanisms, and their management.