Rewire Your Brain: Think Your Way to a Better Life

Brain Changes during Aging 
•
Loss of gray matter in the DLPFC (Raz, Gunning, Head, Dupuis, 
McQuain, Briggs, et al., 1997)
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•
Loss of gray matter in the temporal lobe (Van Patten, Plante, 
Davidson, Kuo, Bjuscak, and Glisky, 2004)
•
Decrease of myelin in the frontal lobe (Bartzokis, Cummings, 
Sultzer, Henderson, Nuechtherlein, and Mintz, 2004)
•
Loss of volume in the temporal lobe (Sullivan, Marsh, 
Mathalon, Lim, and Pfefferbaum, 1995)
•
Degeneration of white matter in the PFC (Salat, Buckner, 
Synder, Greve, Desikan, Busa, et al., 2004)
•
Hippocampus/entorhinal cortex (Bigler, Anderson, and Blatter, 
2002)
•
Loss of large neurons in the frontal lobe (Terry, DeTeresa, and 
Hansen, 1987)
•
Shrinkage of the cerebellum (the bottom back part of the 
brain) (Raz, Gunning, Head, Williamson, and Acker, 2001)
•
Preservation of the OFC (Salat, Kaye, and Janowsky, 2001)
•
Shrinking of the striatum (Gunning - Dixon, Head, McQuain, 
Acker, and Raz, 1998)
•
Decrease in length of white - matter fi bers (Tang, Nyengaard, 
Pakkenberg, and Gundersen, 1997)
•
Loss of diameter in white - matter fi bers (Tang, Nyengaard, 
Pakkenberg, and Gundersen, 1997)
•
Decrease in cerebral glucose metabolism (Willis, Ketter, 
Kimbell, George, Herscovitch, Danielson, et al., 2002)
The above list may seem overwhelming. There are actually many 
things you can do to slow down the aging process and rewire your 
brain so that you can enjoy your later years. You can, in effect, tap 
into a fountain of youth by making changes in your lifestyle. One of 
the things you can do is expand your cognitive reserve.
Cognitive Reserve 
You can enhance your ability to weather the effects of aging by 
increasing your intellectual capacities. The concept of
cognitive 
reserve
has been used to explain why people with more education 
are less vulnerable to developing dementia, such as Alzheimer ’ s 
disease. A person with more education has more neural networks 
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to rely upon if he or she suffers any kind of neurological injury or 
disease. 
Since normal aging involves cognitive decline that results from the 
gradual degeneration of the neurons as well as their dendrites and 
the biochemical mechanisms that support them, cognitive reserve 
builds up support for the neuronal infrastructure over a lifetime. 
The more you build up this infrastructure, the more you can 
afford to lose and still be competent. Cognitive reserve is built up 
by challenging yourself educationally and emotionally while also 
maintaining healthy habits such as diet and exercise. These factors 
have been reported to shield people from even the worst types of 
dementia, including Alzheimer ’ s disease. 
The power of education to boost cognitive reserve and protect 
people from dementia was well illustrated by a study that is known 
as the Nuns ’ Study. Researchers at the University of Kentucky ’ s 
Sanders - Brown Center on Aging performed autopsies on deceased 
elderly nuns. The most highly educated nuns (signifying greater 
brain stimulation) had more branches and connections between 
their neurons. They also seemed to have suffered the least from the 
symptoms of dementia. 
People with more education can sustain greater neuronal damage 
than people with less education and still not show the symptoms 
of that damage. For example, one study showed that approximately 
25 percent of older individuals showed no symptoms of Alzheimer ’ s 
disease when they were alive, but their autopsies found that they 
had Alzheimer ’ s - related brain pathology. Thus, despite the fact that 
their brains showed the classic Alzheimer ’ s plaques and tangles, they 
functioned as well as those whose brains did not have Alzheimer ’ s 
plaques and tangles. 
In one of the longest and largest longitudinal studies of develop-
ment, George Vaillant of Harvard University followed 824 people 
for several decades. The subjects came from many walks of life and 
included both highly educated and poor Bostonians. Despite fi nd-
ing some common symptoms of cognitive decline, the study showed 
that several elderly people developed new skills and became wiser 
with age. These people were less vulnerable to depression than the 
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other older adults, and they fared better than even their younger 
counterparts. 
One measure of neuroplasticity during aging is how you process 
information. As you age, your brain shifts to emphasizing different 
processing areas. Researchers from the University of Toronto have 
shown that people between the ages of fourteen and thirty tend 
to emphasize the temporal lobe (on both sides of the head) when 
performing cognitive activities. The more educated the person is, 
the more he or she uses this lobe. A different pattern is evident in 
people over sixty - fi ve. When they are given the same cognitive tasks 
as younger adults, they tend to emphasize the frontal lobes. The 
more education they had, the more they used the frontal lobes.
Resiliency and Social Support 
Support from your family and your friends plays a major role in your 
resiliency and your longevity. You may be so immersed in the stress 
of everyday life that you take your relationships for granted or have 
a diffi cult time noticing how your relationships impact your stress 
level. The effects of stress can build up over a lifetime. When stress is 
chronic, wear and tear on the body can add up to what has been 
called