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...leap forward in a field that long had to rely on postmortem analyses of brain tissue to confirm diagnoses after the fact - and showed that some 21% of patients with physical signs of dementia suffered no outward symptoms of cognitive impairment. (See how to prevent illness at any age...
...leading theory to explain this fortunate disconnect is the brain-reserve hypothesis, which suggests that people who have more cognitive ability and more neural tissue to start with - sharper minds, broadly - may be better able to withstand the ravages of age. "In some ways, you could think of it like a trained athlete who might be able to resist some atherosclerosis of the heart," explains Dr. Bradley Hyman, director of the Massachusetts Alzheimer's Disease Research Center and a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School...
...finding adds to a collection of studies suggesting that the greater one's initial mental fitness - measured variously as higher educational achievement or high IQ, for example - the better it may be safeguarded in old age. "It's broadly consistent with the notion that if someone starts out with the ability, however their brain is organized, to have a greater set of skills in language and performing other complicated tasks, then maybe that brain is more resistant [later in life]," says Harvard's Hyman. (See the top 10 scientific discoveries...
...research, conducted as part of the National Institute of Aging Interventions Testing Program, took place at three separate test sites and involved nearly 2,000 genetically similar mice. Trials began when mice were about 600 days old - well into middle age, at a stage roughly equivalent to 60-year-old humans. (See the top 10 medical breakthroughs...
...been linked to hyperlipidemia, or high levels of triglycerides in the blood, which can lead to heart disease. It's unclear whether these problems would counteract any longevity benefit that rapamycin might provide in humans. Says Strong, "I think more immediately, people are starting to look at [rapamycin] for age-related diseases like Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease or kidney disease." The drug has also recently entered clinical trials as a human cancer treatment, while another study published last year showed that it may reverse mental retardation caused by the genetic disease tuberous sclerosis in mice. (See TIME...