Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Science Gives Us a Direct and Immediate Explanation for Facebook

Just as our tissues sag with age, witness aging Boomers, so it apparently it also goes that our brains 'sag' and witness Facebook on that where questioning anything is almost entirely absent.  (Science Daily:  How even our brains get 'slacker' as we age)

Don't worry about that sagging brain since we're sure Doctor Oz has some magical ointment to fix it.  The only trouble is actually applying it to the brain but we're sure he has a clever answer for that.

New research from Newcastle University, UK, in collaboration with the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, investigated the way the human brain folds and how this 'cortical folding' changes with age.

Linking the change in brain folding to the tension on the cerebral cortex -- the outer layer of neural tissue in our brains -- the team found that as we age, the tension on the cortex appears to decrease.  This effect was more pronounced in individuals with Alzheimer's disease.

- Science Daily

So far I'm not feeling the horror, at least not to the level I experience when I hear anti-vaxxers assailing the polio vaccine.  They have only seen polios in movies and apparently think they understand it.  See above about sagging brains as it seems to affect the young as well.

"By mapping the brain folding of over 1,000 people, we have shown that our brains fold according to a simple universal law.  We also show that a parameter of the law, which is interpreted as the tension on the inside of the cortex, decreases with age.

"In Alzheimer's disease, this effect is observed at an earlier age and is more pronounced.  The next step will be to see if there is a way to use the changes in folding as an early indicator of disease."

- Science Daily

Well, when I hear, gee, it's not quite as bad as with Alzheimer's then I'm not really feeling that cuddly about it.  Cross your fingers for a punchline which tells us, yep, we can restore that cranial folding and bring new vim and vigor to the brain.  Maybe ...

The team also found that male and female brains differ in size, surface area, and the degree of folding. Indeed, female brains tend to be slightly less folded than male brains of the same age.  Despite this, male and female brains are shown to follow exactly the same law.

"This indicates that for the first time, we have a consistent way of quantifying cortical folding in humans," says Dr Wang.

Throughout the lifespan of healthy individuals, cortical folding changes in the same way in both men and women but in those with Alzheimer's disease the change in the brain folding was significantly different.

- Science Daily

Nope, there's no punchline beyond the need for more study but we see the brains of men tend to sag more than women and, obviously, this is because we use them more, correct?

Hey, if a mob of outraged femmes comes to kill me, at this age I would probably dig it.

No comments: