Brain "scaffolding"
The brain in decline.
A fascinating new study on the brain comes from Dr. Denise C. Park at the Center for Vital Longevity at the University of Texas at Dallas. The study examines the aging brain and how different parts of the brain are used as we age to shore up the weakening parts:
"There is considerable evidence from positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies that older adults show less specificity or differentiation in brain recruitment while performing an array of cognitive tasks. We term this more diffuse pattern of brain activation with age “dedifferentiation” (along with other authors, including Cabeza) but believe that the concept of dedifferentiation has multiple meanings that have not been systematically defined. Broadly put, by dedifferentiation, we mean that the number of brain sites recruited to perform a task increases with age or is different from sites used by young adults. We propose to classify dedifferentiation of neural function into three types."
The three types of dedifferentiation include recruiting the same part of the other hemisphere to help (contralateral recruitment), recruiting a different functional area of the brain to help (unique recruitment), and performing the entire function with a site unused by younger people (substitution).
Kinda sounds like wisdom, doesn't it?
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