Cognitive Changes with Aging

Memorizing a phone number and then easily retrieving it, reading a social media post while we get off the train and putting all the right steps in order when making ourselves a cup of coffee – these are all just simple, everyday examples of the most trivial things we're capable of doing, but are really amazing and incredibly complex cognitive functions brilliantly executed by our brains.

And so, just like every other aspect of our bodies – our brain isn't aging immune as well. A normal part of the aging process involves some extent of gradual physical and cognitive decline, mainly because our "hardware" is getting worn out, and the brain is of no exclusion.

Age related cognitive decline can be seen in many forms and shapes, and is never uniform across different aging individuals. Also, it's important to realize that this phenomena doesn't necessarily have to be tremendous, but can also stand for subtle changes in cognitive performance, which are often only implicit. A study conducted across both 20-year old and 70-year old individuals has shown just that: on a writing task in which subjects were asked to quickly substitute symbols for numbers as quickly as possible, 20 year-olds performed the task almost 75 percent faster than the 70 year-old participants.

Memory of all kinds is also a type of cognitive function that suffers from a gradual decline as part of cognitive aging. To be able to recall new information, the brain must generate a representation of the information, store this representation, and retrieve it when needed. The ability to recall (generate-store-retrieve representation) new information gradually becomes more challenging as we age. On a different study, 70 year-olds had much less recall capacity than 18 year-olds: the aging adults scored only about 75 percent on a once heard story recall task, compared to the youngsters.

The global, whole-brain scoped mechanism that underlies the cognitive aging process (as opposed to the sub-cellular and cellular specific mechanisms) seems to be held in a key component of neuronal communication – the white matter. The brain is comprised of billions of basic units, named neurons. Each neuron has an axon, a cable-like component that reaches out to other neurons and facilitates signal transmission, which accounts for complex brain function execution.

Each axon is coated with a white material, named Myelin, which facilitates better signal propagation across neurons. As we age, the white matter (the Myelin sheath) volume across the brain decreases significantly, which serves as an explanatory evidence as to why our brain has a harder time executing those trivial cognitive functions. So as there's no tangible action to be taken in order to oppose to that natural decline in white matter, there seems to be hope for those wishing to maintain viable brain performance.Cognitive training of different kinds has been shown to contribute to the overall maintenance of brain performance in aging individuals. Different solutions varying from cognitive training software to hyperbaric oxygen therapy to stimulate the brain's oxygen absorption, have been clinically proven to encourage brain wellness and enhanced cognitive functioning.