Aging and its impact on Neurological Changes

Examine Neurological Changes in Aging

Aging brings about changes to the size, cognition, and vasculature of the brain. As individual ages, the brain shrinks, and various changes occur in all aspects, from morphology to molecules. The impacts of aging on cognition and the brain are extensive and have numerous aetiologies. Aging impacts the cells, molecules, cognition, gross morphology, and vasculature (Peters, 2006). This paper will discuss the neurological changes that take place as we grow older.

Brain Process Changes as we Age

As individuals get older, their different bodily systems –the brain included- slowly decline. Mind slips are linked to aging. With that in mind, individuals often encounter those similar memory slips in their twenties but do not quite give such incidences a second thought. On the other hand, older grownups often worry about memory lapses, mainly because of the relation between Alzheimer’s disease and impaired memory. However, note that Alzheimer’s and dementia are not considered to be part of normal aging.

Below are a few changes that occur to the brain during aging:

· Cortical density: There is a decline in cortical density. This is simply the thinning of the brain’s outer-ridged surface as a result of decreasing synaptic connections. Lesser connections might contribute to reduced and slow cognitive processing

· Brain mass: Around the ages of 60 or 70, shrinkage begins to occur at the hippocampus and the frontal lobe, which are the brain parts involved in encoding fresh memories and increased cognitive function

· Neurotransmitter systems: According to research, the brain produces lesser chemical messengers as one gets older, and it is this particular drop in norepinephrine, serotonin, acetylcholine, and dopamine activity that might contribute to increased depression and a decline in memory and cognition

· White matter: It comprises myelinated nerve fibers bundled into tracts. Their function is to transport nerve signals from one brain cell to another. According to researchers, myelin shrinks down with age, and as an outcome, cognition function declines and processing gets slower (Nichols, 2020)

It has been discovered that the brain volume and its general weight drops with age at about 5 percent per decade after 40 years of age with a decline rate potentially raising with age; 70 years of age to be specific. How this transpires is still not completely understood. Grey matter shrinkage is often reported to result from neuronal cell death, though this finding is not completely clear. Also, it has been proposed that a drop in neuronal volume instead of number leads to the various changes related to brain aging and that it might be linked to gender, with different parts getting mostly affected in males and females. The white matter might reduce with age. It has been found that the myelin sheath deteriorates at about 40 years of age, and it has been proposed that the frontal lobes’ late myelinating parts get mostly affected by the white matter lesion s (Peters, 2006).

Memory Changes as we Age

The most broadly observed cognitive change linked to aging is memory. Memory can be grouped into four different parts; semantic memory, episodic memory, working memory, and procedural memory. Episodic and semantic memory is the most crucial concerning aging. Episodic memory can be described as the type of memory whereby information gets stored with mental tags regarding how, when, and where the information was obtained. Examples of episodic memories include your first day of school or even an important meeting you hosted last week. Performance of episodic memory is thought to reduce from mid-age forwards. This occurs in normal aging and is also one of the memory loss traits observed in Alzheimer’s disease (Peters, 2006).

A few memory changes linked to aging include:

· Multitasking: Reduced processing might make carrying out parallel tasks a bit more challenging

· Challenges in learning something new: Adding new information to an aging individual’s memory might take longer

· Remembering appointments or meetings: Without any cues to remember the information, the brain might put meetings into “storage” and not gain access to such information unless something refreshes the individual’s memory

· Remembering numbers and names: Strategic memory, which aids with recalling numbers and names, starts to deteriorate at 20 years of age

Even though some research reveals that a third of the older grownups struggle with their declarative memory – memories of events or fact that have been stored by the brain and can be retrieved- other research show that a fifth of individuals aged 70 complete cognitive tests just as well as those individuals aged 20. Researchers have currently put together parts of the huge brain research puzzle to establish how the human brain subtly changes with time to result in these other changes (Nichols, 2020).

Changes in Cognitive Function as we Age

Cognitive changes as one of the normal aging processes have been properly documented in the scientific literature. Cognitive abilities like vocabulary are somewhat resistant to aging and might even get better with age. On the other hand, other abilities like conceptual reasoning, processing speed, and memory slowly deteriorate with time. There is considerable heterogeneity among older grownups in the decline rate of some abilities, like processing speed and perceptual reasoning measures. Crystallized abilities stay stable or slowly progress at the rate of about 0.02 to 0.003 standard deviations annually through the ages of 60 and 70. Given that crystallized intelligence results from the buildup of information founded on an individual’s life experiences, the older grownups often perform better at those tasks needing this kind of intelligence in comparison to the younger adults. Processing speed can deteriorate at about 30 years onwards (Harada, Love & Triebel, 2013).

An even more noticeable aging impact is observed on the more demanding attention tasks like divided and selective attention. Older grownups perform worse than younger adults in those tasks involving the working memory, which can be described as the ability to hold information momentarily in memory while simultaneously using that particular information. Visuospatial abilities stay intact. Such abilities include distinguishing familiar objects like household gadgets and faces, spatial perception, and object perception. According to research, the formation of concepts, abstraction, and mental flexibility, reduces with age, particularly after 70 years of age (Harada, Love & Triebel, 2013).

Psychological Treatment Approaches

A limited number of researchers have considered psychotherapy as a type of preventive intervention compared to treatment. Several studies have, however, displayed promising outcomes. Few recent attempts mainly focused on Problem Solving Therapy and Reminiscence Therapy have been discussed below:

Reminiscence Therapy

This is a common intervention among older individuals in long-term care, hospice care, and dementia care. It is often used as a type of treatment and intervention for older grownups, mainly because of its non-pharmacological nature. What is reminiscence? This is an internalized trait whereby there is normally an interplay between external thought manifestations and internal mental processes. This therapy has been proven to positively affect older patients, both with and without any mental health issues (Hsin-Yen & Li-Jung, 2018).

Problem Solving Therapy (PST)

This approach aims to minimize depression by targeting the inaccurate assessments of problems and then teaching skills needed to solve these issues adaptively. Researchers adopted a problem-solving therapy selective intervention (six-hour sessions for eight weeks) targeted at individuals with macular degeneration. Since macular degeneration alters the behaviors that someone was capable of, problem-solving therapy presents an inventive behavioral solution to dealing with these visual difficulties and possibly preventing depression. At eight weeks, the experimental group had 50 percent of the depression rate incidence compared to the control group (11.6 percent vs. 23.2 percent). No differences in the incidence rates were found at six months; however, the experimental group had better maintenance activities. This intervention might be effective among older grownups suffering from other chronic illnesses whereby both disability and depression are common. Problem-solving therapy provided over a few weeks might have a long-term impact in preventing depression, especially among patients having medical comorbidity (Leggett & Zarit, 2014).