Overton's Baseball

This is why I’m not worried about overpopulation due to life extension technology.

Via Alex Lightman.

Original: craschworks - comments

I hate it when people go on about the “beauty” of old age. Aging is decay. Yeah, you might find beauty in old age, just as you might find beauty in the mold patterns of an abandoned building. But it’s nothing to be celebrated. If 19 year-olds woke up one morning in the bodies of their 90 year old selves, most would become suicidally depressed.

Fortunately, we no longer need be resigned to aging–fight aging now!

Original: craschworks - comments

Nature Neuroscience 6, 90 - 95 (2002)
Published online: 16 December 2002; | doi:10.1038/nn988
Routes to remembering: the brains behind superior memory
Eleanor A. Maguire1, Elizabeth R. Valentine2, John M. Wilding2 & Narinder Kapur3

1 Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, Institute of Neurology, University College London, 12 Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, UK

2 Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX, UK

3 Department of Clinical Neuropsychology, Wessex Neurological Centre, Southampton General Hospital and Department of Psychology University of Southampton, Southampton SO16 6YD, UK
Correspondence should be addressed to Eleanor A. Maguire e.maguire@fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk
Why do some people have superior memory capabilities? We addressed this age-old question by examining individuals renowned for outstanding memory feats in forums such as the World Memory Championships. Using neuropsychological measures, as well as structural and functional brain imaging, we found that superior memory was not driven by exceptional intellectual ability or structural brain differences. Rather, we found that superior memorizers used a spatial learning strategy, engaging brain regions such as the hippocampus that are critical for memory and for spatial memory in particular. These results illustrate how functional neuroimaging might prove valuable in delineating the neural substrates of mnemonic techniques, which could broaden the scope for memory improvement in the general population and the memory-impaired.

Original: craschworks - comments

Original: craschworks - comments

From the desk of Susan Fonseca-Klein, of the Methusaleh Foundation:

“…We have great news! Wired just released an article about the Methuselah Foundation and Aging 2008.

http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/news/2008/06/methuselah

We would love to get your help ensuring that a lot of people see the article today and learn about this effort.

Here’s what we can all do:

1) Digg the article at www.digg.com. This is one of the best ways to reach more eyeballs. Registering only takes seconds.

Click “digg it” at the Wired article page, or here:

http://digg.com/health/The_Fight_to_End_Aging_Gains_Legitimacy_and_Funding

2) Add a (hopefully positive!) comment about the article at the Digg page.

3) You can also give the article a point on www.reddit.com by clicking the up-arrow on the Reddit button at the Wired article.. Like Digg, registering for Reddit only takes seconds.

4) You can add a comment at the Wired article page itself. A lot of comments will help show Wired and other media outlets that there’s major interest in the science of regenerative medicine, increasing the odds of more coverage in the future.

Thank you everyone for helping us spread the word. We’ll see you tomorrow!

Best wishes,

Susan Fonseca-Klein
Aging 2008 Coordinator
Methuselah Foundation Director of Development
http://www.mfoundation.org/aging2008/”

Original: craschworks - comments

Original: craschworks - comments

Via radiantsun

http://www.psychologytoday.com/rss/index.php?term=pto-20070830-000004&page=1

Studies worldwide have found that with each passing decade of their lives and with each insult they inflict on their bodies, men’s fertility decreases, while genetic risk to offspring slowly mounts. The range of findings is staggering: Several studies have shown that the older the man, the more fragmented the DNA in his ejaculated sperm, resulting in greater risk for infertility, miscarriage or birth defects. Investigations out of Israel, Europe, and the United States have shown that non-verbal (performance) intelligence may decline exclusively due to greater paternal age; that up to a third of all cases of schizophrenia are linked to increasing paternal age; and that men 40 and older are nearly six times more likely to have offspring with autism than men under age 30. Other research shows that the risk of breast and prostate cancer in offspring increases with paternal age.

and

The biggest news—the father’s role in brain disorders—has come to light largely because of research from Israel, where birth records routinely include the age of the male parent. The first unsettling finding linked paternal age and schizophrenia.

“In our first study, looking at every pregnancy in Jerusalem from 1964 to 1976, we found that increased age in the father predicted increased cases of schizophrenia in the children,” explains Malaspina, who was on the team doing the work. “In our second study we found that when the cases arose from new mutations—not familial inheritance—it almost always could be traced to the genetics of the father. Somewhere between a quarter and a third of the cases could be explained only by the age of the father—a threefold risk linked to fathers older than 50 compared with those in their 20s.” Studies in Sweden and California produced almost identical results.

Original: craschworks - comments

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/sports/playmagazine/0819play-brain.html?ex=1188273600&en=842c3ba0d994a5cf&ei=5070

“….Scientists have suspected for decades that exercise, particularly regular aerobic exercise, can affect the brain. But they could only speculate as to how. Now an expanding body of research shows that exercise can improve the performance of the brain by boosting memory and cognitive processing speed. Exercise can, in fact, create a stronger, faster brain.

This theory emerged from those mouse studies at the Salk Institute. After conducting maze tests, the neuroscientist Fred H. Gage and his colleagues examined brain samples from the mice. Conventional wisdom had long held that animal (and human) brains weren’t malleable: after a brief window early in life, the brain could no longer grow or renew itself. The supply of neurons — the brain cells that enable us to think — was believed to be fixed almost from birth. As the cells died through aging, mental function declined. The damage couldn’t be staved off or repaired.

Gage’s mice proved otherwise. Before being euthanized, the animals had been injected with a chemical compound that incorporates itself into actively dividing cells. During autopsy, those cells could be identified by using a dye. Gage and his team presumed they wouldn’t find such cells in the mice’s brain tissue, but to their astonishment, they did. Up until the point of death, the mice were creating fresh neurons. Their brains were regenerating themselves.

All of the mice showed this vivid proof of what’s known as “neurogenesis,” or the creation of new neurons. But the brains of the athletic mice in particular showed many more. These mice, the ones that scampered on running wheels, were producing two to three times as many new neurons as the mice that didn’t exercise.

But did neurogenesis also happen in the human brain? To find out, Gage and his colleagues had obtained brain tissue from deceased cancer patients who had donated their bodies to research. While still living, these people were injected with the same type of compound used on Gage’s mice. (Pathologists were hoping to learn more about how quickly the patients’ tumor cells were growing.) When Gage dyed their brain samples, he again saw new neurons. Like the mice, the humans showed evidence of neurogenesis.
….
This spring, neuroscientists at Columbia University in New York City published a study in which a group of men and women, ranging in age from 21 to 45, began working out for one hour four times a week. After 12 weeks, the test subjects, predictably, became more fit. Their VO2 max, the standard measure of how much oxygen a person takes in while exercising, rose significantly.

But something else happened as a result of all those workouts: blood flowed at a much higher volume to a part of the brain responsible for neurogenesis. Functional M.R.I.’s showed that a portion of each person’s hippocampus received almost twice the blood volume as it did before. Scientists suspect that the blood pumping into that part of the brain was helping to produce fresh neurons.

The hippocampus plays a large role in how mammals create and process memories; it also plays a role in cognition. If your hippocampus is damaged, you most likely have trouble learning facts and forming new memories. Age plays a factor, too. As you get older, your brain gets smaller, and one of the areas most prone to this shrinkage is the hippocampus. (This can start depressingly early, in your 30’s.) Many neurologists believe that the loss of neurons in the hippocampus may be a primary cause of the cognitive decay associated with aging. A number of studies have shown that people with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia tend to have smaller-than-normal hippocampi.

The Columbia study suggests that shrinkage to parts of the hippocampus can be slowed via exercise. The subjects showed significant improvements in memory, as measured by a word-recall test. Those with the biggest increases in VO2 max had the best scores of all.

“It’s reasonable to infer, though we’re not yet certain, that neurogenesis was happening in the people’s hippocampi,” says Scott A. Small, an associate professor of neurology at Columbia and the senior author of the study, “and that working out was driving the neurogenesis.”

Original: craschworks - comments