How fast will your brain age?
Lindsay Hill
BIO1610-009
March 15, 2017
There is a new study out by Rhinn and Abeliovich that shows that your brain can dramatically age when you turn 65 or not if you have the right version of the gene TMEM106B, this gene controls the rate at which your brain ages. If you have a deformity in this gene your brain will look 10 to 12 years older than those that have the working part of this gene. Those with the working copy of this gene can have protection against certain mental diseases and neurological disorders that come with age. One of these disorders it can help prevent is dementia.
The discovery of this gene can help doctors know who is more at risk for these diseases and that in turn leads to better care and preventative measures. The discovery of this gene will also help in the developmental of drugs to help aid in keeping your brain healthy and younger longer. Studies associated with how the brain ages and disease such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. By far the major risk to neurological disorders and diseases is age. Age changes those things in your brain that prevent diseases.
Previous studies have associated TMEM106B with a rare form of dementia called frontotemporal lobar degeneration. However, the new study shows that the TMEM106B gene is more broadly associated with brain age, and underlies how well seniors maintain their cognitive abilities, according to Rhinn and Abeliovich the Scientists who are over the study of this gene.
To determine what might control brain aging, the two researchers analyzed genetic data from more than 1,200 autopsied human brains from people who had not been diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease while alive. They focused on a few hundred genes whose levels of expression had previously been found to either increase or decrease with aging. From this information, they compiled a chart of what they called "differential aging" denoting the difference between someone's true or chronological brain age compared with an apparent brain age. I like how they performed their studies and had a good control group who they could study over a period of time.
One gene, TMEM106B, popped out of the data as a genetic driver of differential aging. TMEM106B appears to control inflammation and neuronal loss in the brain. There are two forms of the gene, or alleles: One form is associated with an increased rate, or risk, of brain aging, and the other allele is protective and is thought to prevent such an acceleration of aging. In the same study, Rhinn and Abeliovich also looked at the brains of people who had been affected by Alzheimer's disease and/or Huntington's disease during their lives, and they observed the same effect of TMEM106B on brain aging in those people.
"TMEM106B begins to exert its effect once people reach age 65," Abeliovich said. "Until then, everybody's in the same boat, and then there's some yet-to-be-defined stress that kicks in. If you have two good copies of the gene, you respond well to that stress. If you have two bad copies, your brain ages quickly.”
The reason that I chose this article was because I have worked with people who have dementia and Parkinson’s. It is sad to watch them degenerate and lose those memories they have cherished their entire lives. I believe this research is wonderful in early detection and being able to provide those early preventive care. It will help with each of our mental health so by the age we turn 65 we are able to have the best care for our aging brains.
Reference:
Wanjek, C. (2017, March 15). How Fast Will Your Brain Age? Scientists Identify Key Gene. In Live Science. Retrieved from http://www.livescience.com/58282-scientists-find-gene-that-slows-brain-aging.html
My grandmother has recently started to lose her memory and recollection capabilities so I found this article very interesting. I am most interested in the types of preventative care that can be done for people found with this brain-aging gene. It sounded like there is an extra stress on the brain at around age 65 that is not very well understood. If the stress is not understood I wonder how they are able to prevent the effects of it. This is something I would be interested to learn more about. Thanks for the article.
ReplyDeleteMT
Wow! What an interesting article. It made me start to think about some things.. Are there preventative measures/practices we can do to slow the aging process now of that gene (with or without medication)? Does a non working full-time student's brain "slow down" faster/slower than a non studying full-time workers brain due to lots of processing? Do drugs like adderall and vyvanse affect the aging process of the brain? Are athletes more prone to degeneration of the brain at an earlier age due to head injuries?
ReplyDeleteJoshuaR
While I can't answer all of your questions, I do know that brain injuries, like concussions, do have an effect on cognitive ability later in life. Often times they show symptoms similar to those of Parkinson's and they have memory and attention deficits.
DeleteIn researching an answer to your question if there were ways we could slow down the aging process, I was interested to find that this gene seems to have a genetic link that can not be altered. I found this to be very interesting in helping to understand the cause of the degeneration of this gene.
Delete"From what we could see, the effect of the [TMEM106B] risk allele is additive, in the sense that the brain of elderly people with two copies of the risk allele 'looks' five years older than the [brain] of people with only one copy of risk allele, and [they] themselves 'look' five years older than people with no risk allele," Rhinn told Live Science. "It is indeed one of our hypotheses that TMEM106B regulates systematic response to age-associated stressors in [the] human brain."
Further testing will help us to either treat, predict, and treat those of our society that are afflicted with the genetic degeneration of the TMEM106B gene
http://www.livescience.com/58282-scientists-find-gene-that-slows-brain-aging.html-- AVB
there are mainly three different effects that adderall has on the brain, in regards to the process of aging. first, Adderall can be neurotixic, which by definition alters normal activity in the nervous system. in the long run by damaging the dopamine neurons within the brain. second, your tolerance levels will increase, but this can be reversed, unlike neurotoxicity in nature. when adderall is taken at a young age, the third effect the drug has on the brain is it has subtle developmental effects. this can lead to a neuron "believing" that there is more dopamine than there actually is, which could lead to mature circuits in the brain that have a reduced dopamine levels once the person has matured.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.rawstory.com/2016/10/here-is-what-adderall-does-to-your-brain-if-you-take-it-long-enough/
BB
After reading this post I am left with the question, why would this gene choose to show it self only after the age of 65? why is it set to degrade or stay the same at 65?
ReplyDelete-Austin Richards