Brain atrophy vs. them learnin' books

I thought this was really interesting, especially for my highly-educated parents, who are approaching their 70's and trying not to be terrified of Alzheimer's or other dementias:
Higher education lowers dementia risk.

First of all, they provide support for the title's preposition that higher ed does help against dementia risk, which is a compelling idea on its own. Fleshing out the topic, the second half of the press release is particularly interesting. They define dementia "risk" as the inability to cope with one's changing brain, since dementia is an experience of symptoms and not a specific physical problem of the brain. The implication is that since more educated/flexible brains cope better, it takes a higher level of physical pathology to manifest the actual impairment that would display the symptoms to be called "dementia." It sounds a bit like splitting hairs/psychobabble, but it's really very profound. Basically, education adds resiliency to the brain, so it can adapt to and endure brain changes and the person still experiences a fairly normal life. It's really cool to see some real meta-analytical evidence of this theory!

It's kind of like the recent recommendation that doctors stop screening for prostate cancer after age 75 because even if a man gets it, he'll probably die from something else first. So he'll have prostate cancer, but won't experience any symptoms, so who cares? Why worry about it or go through painful treatments if it won't change anything? Again, it sounds strange to think of that as a good thing, but since I value quality of life, I see it as great. The chances that I will have the brain pathology that could cause dementia are equal to others in my age group, I have no physical advantages. But the chances that I will actually experience dementia are much lower. And that goes for pretty much everyone in my family, particularly my dad. He has both a Ph.D. and a very sincere fear of his mind diminishing before his body. I sent him this article in the hopes that it will alleviate some of that fear. Now for the next step, I'd like to see the relationship between fear of dementia and experience of dementia. (So all you neuroscientists reading this blog, you know, get on that.)

Psychology has repeatedly shown that when it comes to brains you either "use it or lose it." So get educated earlier in your life to build your brain's coping and flexibility, then keep using your coping skills throughout your life to maintain them, and you'll end up so far ahead that as your brain starts to fail you won't notice!

And that's my musing on science for the morning.