Heads Up, Guys: New Study Finds a Man's Memory Fades Faster Than a Woman's

[Garrison Hilliard]

Wives everywhere are doing the "I told you so" dance over a study that
finds that a man's memory fades faster with age than a woman's.According
to the research, published in 2015 in JAMA Neurology, everyone's memory
and brain volume typically begin to decline after age 30, but memory
skills worsen faster in men after age 40 than in women. In addition, the
portion of the brain that controls memory gets smaller more quickly in men
than women past middle age.But wait. That's not really the most important
- or even most surprising - part of the study. And this may even be
considered the good news. These age-related changes have little to do with
Alzheimer's, according to the study's Mayo Clinic researchers. They're not
linked with the buildup of amyloid plaques in the brain, considered the
danger sign of Alzheimer's, or with the gene that's a known risk factor
for developing Alzheimer's.Experts had speculated that the memory lapses
we experience as we get older - those "senior moments" - could be related
to early stages of the disease. "But our findings suggest that memory
actually declines in almost everybody, and well before there is any
amyloid deposition in the brain," brain researcher and lead author
Clifford Jack told HealthDay.In other words, forgetting where you parked
the car is a normal part of aging, and sorry, guys, you may be affected
more than the opposite sex.The researchers studied 1,246 cognitively
normal adults age 30 to 90 from 2006 to 2014, testing memory skills and
using scans to measure brain structure and detect the presence of amyloid
plaques. What they found was that the area of the brain responsible for
memory became smaller in men compared with women, particularly after age
60. Among those with the Alzheimer's gene, abnormal plaque buildup didn't
typically occur until after age 70, compared with those without the
gene.As Jack told CNN, "No matter how you slice and dice these measures of
neurodegeneration, everything declines with age, very few people remain
normal into the late 80s," he said. "It starts first with men, but women
follow."In an accompanying editorial, neurologist Charles DeCarli,
director of the Alzheimer's Disease Center at the University of
California, Davis, wrote that the study "challenges the notion" that
amyloid accumulation explains why memory declines as we grow
older.Instead, the research provides new information about what typically
happens in the brain as we age and helps us consider "ways in which we can
maintain cognitive health and optimize resistance to late-life
dementia."What are some of those ways? Consider the recent Swedish study
showing that diet, exercise and brain games can slow cognitive decline,
improving some brain skills by 150 percent. — Candy
Sagon

https://stayingsharp.aarp.org/art/discover/15/male-female-brain.html_______________________________________________

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