Unlike what most of us think, our organs, even the brain, get worn out over time. The concept of wear and tear also applies here, however, how susceptible is our brain to this process? Can it affect our brain size? Research shows it may. A new study published in Nature Communication, suggests that knowing how the shape of your brain changes over time could be really important for spotting dementia early. Researchers from the University of California, Irvine (UC Irvine) and the University of La Laguna in Spain found that when the brain's overall structure shifts, it's often connected to a drop in your mental abilities, like how well you can remember things or figure out problems. Getting a better handle on this could lead to improved care and better treatments for memory loss.How Does Your Brain’s Shape Change Scientists think that some of the normal wear and tear that eventually causes diseases like dementia also change the brain's structure and shape. If we can watch out for these changes in shape, it might be a relatively easy way to catch dementia sooner than before.Most research on the aging brain just focuses on how much tissue is lost in certain areas. But these researchers looked at something different. the overall shape of the brain shifts in systematic ways, and those shifts are closely tied to whether someone shows cognitive impairment. The team studied 2,603 MRI brain scans from people ranging from 30 up to 97 years old. They tracked how the brain's structure and shape changed over time and compared these changes to the scores people got on tests measuring their thinking abilities. They noticed that as people got older, the changes (shrinking and expanding) didn't happen evenly everywhere in the brain. They also saw that in people who were already struggling with their thinking skills, this unevenness was much clearer. For example, the areas of the brain toward the back were found to shrink more with age, particularly in those who scored poorly on tests for reasoning ability. The researchers need to collect a lot more information to be absolutely certain about these links, but this study strongly suggests they exist. Can The Size Of Our Brain Be A Sign Of Alzheimer’s? The findings offer a new, surprising idea about what might cause neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, where brain damage gets worse over time. The researchers suggest that the changes in the brain's shape over time might actually start to squeeze a very important memory center called the entorhinal cortex. This is critical because that same region is the place where the harmful, toxic proteins linked to Alzheimer's typically begun to gather first. UC Irvine neuroscientist Michael Yassa said this squeeze could help explain why the entorhinal cortex is the "ground zero" for Alzheimer's damage. He explained that if the aging brain is slowly changing shape in a way that "squeezes this fragile region against a rigid boundary, it may create the perfect storm for damage to take root." Understanding this physical process gives scientists a whole new way to think about how Alzheimer's disease works and offers the exciting possibility of detecting it much earlier. To move forward, the team needs to look at more brain scans and take more precise measurements. They are especially interested in finding out why some brain areas might expand with age and how that relates to thinking ability.
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