Word: brained
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Consider, for a moment, how memory is supposed to operate. Consider, that is, the hippocampus. A cashew-shaped node of tissue, the hippocampus sits deep in the temporal lobe of the brain, near the amygdala, which is the seat of emotions. If the brain has a gatekeeper of sensory information, the hippocampus is it. The aroma and sizzle of bacon frying, the smooth finish of polished granite, a phone number you need to call--all must pass through the hippocampus. Only if information gets in can it be moved along to the prefrontal cortex, where it will be held briefly...
...their attention starts to flicker, and that plays a role of its own. The prefrontal cortex, which controls planning, organization, abstraction and forethought, is the same region that allows us to concentrate, and it starts to diminish in size well before middle age. It also begins to use the brain's fuel, glucose, less efficiently and loses about half the neurotransmitter dopamine it once had. The result of all this, says Amy Arnsten, a neurobiologist at Yale Medical School, is that as we get older, we get "ADHD, but it's attention-deficit hypoactivity--not hyperactivity...
...Yale, Arnsten has roused idling monkey and rat brains with a medication called guanfacine, which appears to amplify the circuits of the prefrontal cortex. The drug has been tested on children with ADHD as well as on people with traumatic brain injury, posttraumatic stress and schizophrenia, and in each case it seems to revitalize working memory...
...concentration is slipping, since studies show just how vital paying attention can be to forming memories. In one study, neuroscientist Dr. Adam Gazzaley of the University of California, San Francisco, recruited two groups of subjects--one ages 19 to 30 and the other 60 to 77--and scanned their brains while they were looking at pictures of human faces, then again when they were viewing landscapes. This allowed him to map out where in the brain they were taking in these images. Then he put the volunteers back in the scanner and told them that he was going to show...
...related study, psychologist Susan De Santi of NYU's Center for Brain Health studied subjects who had been diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a condition that can be transitory but one that also often segues to Alzheimer's. Two years later, some did develop the disease, but in others the symptoms faded. What De Santi found was that younger subjects who had no trouble paying attention saw their conditions improve...