Without a doubt, the human brain It never ceases to surprise us. And it is that Our enigmatic command center is a marvel in itself, being capable of containing around 86 billion neurons, each interconnected through trillions of synapses, and that only represents 2% of the total body weight. Another important fact is that The brain changes throughout life, adapting and reorganizing in response to new experiences and learning, a phenomenon known as neuroplasticity.
And to delve deeper into these changes, some time ago research was published by scientists from the Monash University in Australia and published in the Psychophysiology journal. The novelty? The thing is The experts have revealed significant changes in the network structure of the brain that begin to manifest themselves after the age of 40.
What is brain “rewiring”?
According to the study, The human brain undergoes a significant transformation upon reaching the fourth decade of life, at which point it begins to reconfigure itself in ways that affect its connectivity and flexibility of thought. This The phenomenon, described as “rewiring,” involves greater integration and connection between various neural networks. as we age, directly impacting how middle-aged adults process new information and manage memory.
The research analyzed the results of 144 previous studies, involving tens of thousands of participants, a process in which it was observed how brain connectivity patterns vary throughout life. “During the first years of life, a rapid organization of functional brain networks occurs. This is followed by a refinement of functional networks until around the third and fourth decades of life. A multifaceted interaction of brain connectivity and functional networks may follow with ageing. potentially harmful and compensatory changes”, explain its authors.
Thus, upon reaching the age of 40, Internal connectivity decreases while connections between different networks strengthen. This structural change results in the brain having less regional specialization but greater global interconnection, and with this there is a decrease in cognitive flexibility, affecting skills such as the formation of new concepts, abstract thinking, and verbal and numerical reasoning.
But not everything is loss. According to scientists, when reaching this point of “rewiring” there are certain abilities such as Vocabulary and general knowledge tend to remain stable or even improve. Meanwhile, to mitigate this phenomenon, experts recommend maintaining a healthy lifestyle that includes a balanced diet, regular exercise and activities that promote mental well-being in order to delay changes in neural networks.
All in all, the results of this study allow us to understand how aging affects cognition and mental agility. AND With an increasingly aging society, it becomes much more valuable to understand these changes in brain connectivity. and its impact on daily life.
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