Let's be friends
Good relationships with people helped delay brain aging
Elizaveta Ivtushok, N+1
Strong social connections can stop the aging of the brain and the deterioration of cognitive functions in older people. This conclusion was reached by American scientists who tested how well memory works in elderly subjects with a large number of friends and their less sociable peers. Article by Amanda Cook Maher et al. Psychological well-being in elderly adults with extraordinary episodic memory is published in the journal PLOS One.
The main risk factor for neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease, is age. On the other hand, the deterioration of cognitive functions (memory, attention or learning) with age is considered the norm. However, both of these processes – the development of neurodegenerative diseases and cognitive decline – are closely interrelated. That is why researchers are actively studying various factors – from lifestyle to the environment – that can slow down the aging process of the brain.
Now scientists have tested how the expansion of social connections affects one of the most important (and vulnerable to age–related changes) cognitive functions - memory. The study was conducted as part of the SuperAging Program Northwestern University in Chicago – it involves people over the age of 80 who are distinguished by good (compared to their peers) indicators of cognitive activity.
The study involved 31 people (aged 80 to 96 years) from the SuperAging Program group and 19 people from the same age group (80 to 102 years) with average indicators of mental clarity for his age. At the same time, all participants had no diagnosed neurological diseases. People from the first group are distinguished (according to the results of the memorization test, during which it is necessary to name 15 objects shown) by a good episodic memory: they can store and retrieve memories of events as well as people aged 50 to 65 do. Scientists tracked the factors that influence this difference by asking participants to fill out questionnaires about their lives: social connections, attitude to themselves and the world around them, as well as about goals in life.
Graph from the article in PLOS One – VM.
The researchers found that people from the first group differ (p=0.005) in warmer and closer relationships with their acquaintances than their peers from the control group. Other indicators (including demographic ones – gender and age) did not affect the differences between the participants.
Thus, the authors concluded that social connections play an important role in stopping the process of neurodegeneration with age. Nevertheless, as the scientists themselves note, this issue needs to be studied further – using more participants from different age groups.
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