Part3

Read the text and answer the questions below.

Age-proofing our brains

A

While it may not be possible to completely age-proof our brains, a brave new world of anti-ageing research shows that our grey matter may be far more flexible than we thought. So no one, no matter how old, has to lose their mind. The brain has often been called the time-bound organ. It’s our most powerful and mysterious organ, the seat of the self, laced with as many billions of neurons as the galaxy has stars. No wonder the mere notion of an ageing, failing brain—the prospect of memory loss, confusion, and the unravelling of our personality—is so terrifying. As Mark Williams, MD, author of The American Geriatrics Society’s Complete Guide to Aging and Health, says, “The fear of dementia is stronger than the fear of death itself.” Yet the deterioration of the brain is not inevitable. This doesn’t happen because it is that it should continue to function for a lifetime, says Zaven Khachaturian, Ph.D., director of the Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Diseases Research Institute. There’s no reason to expect it to deteriorate with age, even though many of US are living longer lives. In fact, scientists’ view of the brain’s potential is rapidly changing. In Stanford University neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky, Ph.D. Thirty years ago we thought Alzheimer’s disease was a disease of successful ageing. Now we recognise it’s a disease with a distinct pathology in which, some people simply don’t experience any mental decline, so we’ve begun to study them. I Andrea Banata, M.D., Ph.D., head of the Department of Neurology at the University of Iowa and author of Descartes’ Error, concurs. Older people can continue to have extremely rich and healthy mental lives.

B

The seniors were tested in 1988 and again in 1991. Four factors were found to be related to their mental fitness: levels of education and physical activity, lung function, and feelings of self-efficacy. “Each of these elements affects the way our brain functions,” says Marilyn Albert, Ph.D., of Harvard Medical School, and colleagues from Yale, Duke, and Brandeis Universities and the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, who hypothesises that regular exercise may actually increase blood flow to the brain and nerve growth, both of which create more densely brained neurons, rendering the neurons stronger and better able to resist disease. Moderate aerobic exercise, including long brisk walks and frequently climbing stairs, will accomplish this.

C

Education also serves to enhance brain function. People who have challenged themselves with at least a college education may actually stimulate the neurons in their brain. Moreover, native intelligence may protect our brain. It’s possible that smart people begin with a greater number of neurons, and therefore have a greater reserve to fall back on in case of brain damage. “If you have a lot of neurons and keep them busy, you may be able to tolerate more damage in your brain before it shows,” says Peter Davies, MD, of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York. Early linguistic ability also seems to help our brain later in life. A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine looked at 83 elderly men and examined the autobiographies they had written 60 years earlier just as they were young at a college. The men whose essays were complex and dense with description showed into their eighties and nineties.

D

Finally, personality seems to play an important role in protecting our mental prowess. A sense of self-efficacy may protect our brain, buffeting it from the harmful effects of stress. According to Albert, there’s evidence that elevated levels of stress hormones may harm brain cells and neurons. The hippocampus—a cauliflower-shaped organ that’s a crucial moderator of memory to stress. A sense that we can effectively chart our own course in the world may reduce the release of stress hormones and protect us as we age. “It’s not a matter of whether you experience stress or not,” Albert concluded, “it’s your attitude toward it.” Reducing stress by meditating on a regular basis may benefit the brain as well. It also increases the activity of the brain’s prefrontal lobe, the centre of the hippocampus and immune system, which improves sleep and may retard the ageing process. Studies at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and the University of Western Ontario found that people who meditated regularly had higher levels of melatonin than those who took tranquiliser supplements. Another study, conducted jointly by Maharishi International University, Harvard University, and the University of Maryland, found that seniors who meditated for three months experienced dramatic improvements in their psychological well-being, compared to their non-meditative peers.

E

Animal studies confirm that both mental and physical activity boost brain strength. At the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology in Urbana, Illinois, psychologist William Greenough, Ph.D., let some rats play with a profusion of toys. These rodents developed about 25 percent more connections between their neurons than did rats that didn’t get any mentally stimulating recreation. In addition, rats that exercised on a treadmill developed more capillaries in specific parts of their brain than did their sedentary counterparts. This increased the blood flow to their brains. “Clearly the message is to do as many different things as possible,” Greenough says.

F

It’s not just scientists who are catching anti-ageing fever. Walk into any health food store, and you’ll find nutritional formulas—with names like BrainSmart and Smart ALC—that claim to sharpen mental ability. The book Smart Drugs & Nutrients, by Ward Dean, M.D., and John Morgenthaler, was self-published in 1990 and has sold over 120,000 copies worldwide. It has also spawned an underground network of people investing their own brain chemistry with extracts and drugs. Among the latter compounds extracted from leaves and extracts of Ginkgo biloba, which is based on the leaves of the 200-million-year-old ginkgo tree, which has been shown in published studies to increase oxygen in the brain and slow symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease—by up to 22 percent in the last 12 months, according to Paddy Spence, president of SPINS, a San Francisco-based market research firm. Indeed, products that increase and preserve mental performance are a small but emerging segment of the supplements industry, says Linda Gilbert, president of HealthFocus, a company that monitors consumer health trends. While neuroscientists like Khachaturian like the use of these products to the consumption of taking cali over your shoulder, the public is nevertheless gobbling up nutrients that promise cognitive enhancement.

Questions 20-24

Choose the FOUR correct letters among A-G. Write your answers in boxes 20-24 on your answer sheet.

20-24 Which of the FOUR statements or conditions affecting the brain’s function?

□ Preventive treatment against Alzheimer’s disease

□ Doing active aerobic exercise and frequently climbing stairs

□ High levels of education □ Early verbal or language competence training

□ Having more supplements such as ginkgo tree

□ Participate in more physical activity involving stimulating tasks

□ Personality and feelings of self-fulfilment

Questions 25-33

Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-G) with opinions or deeds below. Write the appropriate letters A-G in boxes 25-33 on your answer sheet. NB you may use any letter more than once

		A	B	C	D	E	F	G
25	Alzheimer’s was probably a kind of disease rather than a normal ageing process.	○	○	○	○	○	○	○
26	Keeping neurons busy, people may be able to endure more harm to your brain.	○	○	○	○	○	○	○
27	Regular exercise can boost blood flow to the brain and increase anti-disease ability.	○	○	○	○	○	○	○
28	Significant increase of Sales of ginkgo has been shown.	○	○	○	○	○	○	○
29	More links between their neurons are found among stimulated animals.	○	○	○	○	○	○	○
30	Effectiveness of the use of brain supplements products can be little scientific proof.	○	○	○	○	○	○	○
31	High-strand level of stress may damage brain cells and cause part of brain to deteriorate.	○	○	○	○	○	○	○
32	Products that upgrade and preserve mental competence are still a newly developing industry.	○	○	○	○	○	○	○