This past June, we were treated to a visit from Elder Brother of Boulder, Colorado, for the first time in nearly one year - understandable for those of us who have heard about the novel corona virus pandemic that has been plaguing our world. As he and I are wont to do, not as much as were our mother and I but still enough, he brought "stuff" to me. In this case, "stuff" included the DVDs and the Course Guidebook to a course put out by The Great Courses in Chantilly, Virginia, "The Aging Brain" put out in 2016.
EB had thought that Hunky Husband and I would find the course interesting, considering HH's developing dementia. The course author (and narrator on the DVDs which I have not viewed) is Thad A Polk, Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan. HH read the Course Guidebook before passing it on to me with the comment that he liked it. Me? Well, not so much. That's a personal bias, of course.
If I thought that "The Joy of Sweat" was a slim volume of a book, "The Aging Brain: Course Guidebook" is even more slender, topping out at 117 pages that include 12 pages of Bibliography. That is to be expected of a book that is merely the outline of the lectures that populate the course. The reason I didn't find the book more intriguing is that, as I expect to be true of anyone who spends time on the internet, I've been exposed to so much of the contained information - whether I understood it or not. I shall try to present some of the ideas presented by Professor Polk that caught my attention.
- Page 43: "Communication between Different Brain Areas"
"...studies have shown that the prefrontal cortex excites and inhibits other parts of the brain depending on task demands--at least in young adults"
"...older participants had a selective deficit in neural inhibition. Although their prefrontal cortex could turn on relevant parts of the brain when necessary, it didn't do a good job in turning irrelevant brain areas off."
"....This experiment [by a Dr. Gazzaley and his collaborators] suggested that the ability to inhibit neural processing might be a crucial component of successful memory."
- Pages 46-48: "How our Emotions and Mood Change as We Age"
These paragraphs cited several studies (longitudinal and cohort) that show "that life satisfaction peaked at age 65."
A hypothesis was put forward that the increase in life satisfaction might be produced by increasing cognitive impairment as one aged; however, it seems that "The sharpest older people are typically the most positive. The positivity seen in older adults seems to be a strategic choice, not a pathological impairment."
"Probably the most successful explanation for this is called socioemotional selectivity theory, which was developed by Laura Carstensen at Stanford University. One way of summarizing this theory is to say that older people realize that life is too short to focus on the negative."
- Pages 59-60: "We remember information that we test ourselves on."
"One particularly powerful demonstration was conducted by Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke at Washington University in St. Louis. They asked 120 undergraduates to study and try to remember as much as they could about an article that you might read in an encyclopedia."
"One group of students studied the article in four different sessions for a total of 20 minutes. Another group of students only studied it for five minutes but were then immediately tested three times. Specifically, they were given a blank piece of paper and were asked to write down as they could remember." After the first test, the students were given another sheet of paper on which to write what they could recall - twice, without being given any feedback on the accuracy of any earlier test.
"Both groups were also asked to guess how well they would remember the article a week later."
"The next week, everyone came back and tried to recall as much information from the article as they could."
The results showed that the students who had been tested remembered more than 60% of the original ideas while the other group remembered 40%. Personally, either statistic seems really high, to me.
- Pages 62-67: "Dementia and Alzheimer's Disease"
"Dementia refers to a loss in mental abilities that is severe enough to interfere substantially with the normal activities of life"
"Dementia is usually progressive."
"People with dementia may also have trouble with language and may find it difficult to follow directions or put thoughts into words. They may become restless, agitated or disoriented and start behaving inappropriately, or even aggressively."
"Warning signs include symptoms like repeatedly asking for the same information, finding it difficult to complete mental tasks that used to be easy, or forgetting what season it is. Other early symptoms could include getting lost in a very familiar environment...."
"...silent strokes produce infarcts--that is, localized brain damage. And if someone experiences a series of multiple infarcts, the accumulation of brain damage can lead to dementia...called multi-infarct dementia."
"By far the most common cause of dementia is Alzheimer's disease...accounts for 50-75 percent of cases of late-life dementia."
"The disease progresses at different rates in different people, but no treatments have yet been found that can slow or halt the disease. It usually has a late onset...after age 65. When it's diagnosed before age 65, it's referred to as early-onset Alzheimers...."
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Notes to Bogie and Dudette:
HH read "Humble Pi" that had been passed along to us by Dudette & WichiDude a few weeks ago, and passed it along to me with a notation, "Good Book". Today, as I was on the last few pages of the book, HH came into my den to see what I was reading. It was as if he had never seen the book before. He doesn't recall anything about it or having read it. (Hey! He can read it with enjoyment, again!) While I was writing these notes, HH walked in and, of course, the same was true for "The Aging Brain". He will be reading it, again - and watching the DVD(s) if he can find it/them.
For the past few days, HH has come into my den while I've been sitting at my computer. Each time he has asked why I am shaking my head. I can only assume that what he is seeing is my head movement due to essential tremors - which several years ago, he teased me about when observing me from across the room at Red Cross meetings. He doesn't remember that I have them or anything about them. (I had essential tremors before I retired from Cessna in 2004!)
I didn't realize that the effect was still called "dementia" when caused by a stroke. Thank you for the information.
Posted by: WD-40 | August 19, 2021 at 11:24 PM
WD-40--Neither did I. How's it going?
Posted by: Cop Car | August 20, 2021 at 07:42 AM