A large scientific study has revealed that the brain goes through two main phases of change, the first in the mid-twenties, and the second after the age of sixty.
The researchers analyzed more than 1.3 million brain cells taken from donors ranging in age from infancy to 97 years old, with the aim of studying changes in the prefrontal cortex, an area associated with planning, decision-making and memory formation.
The results showed that the brain changes rapidly during childhood and adolescence, with the formation of new neural connections and the reorganization of cells. However, the pace of these changes slows abruptly around age 24, after which the prefrontal cortex enters a period of relative stability that lasts until around age 60.
After the age of sixty, new changes begin to appear, and some of the cells responsible for protecting the brain and maintaining its functions become more active.
This atlas provides an essential reference for understanding healthy brain aging at the molecular level," said Dr. Kiran Girdhar, co-author of the study from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.
The study is part of the PsychAD project, which aims to create a detailed map of the brain and understand changes associated with aging and neurological and psychiatric diseases. Researchers used messenger RNA (mRNA) to identify active genes within different types of brain cells, allowing them to observe changes at the cellular level.
The study also revealed changes in the brain's biological clock. In youth and middle age, the neurons responsible for planning, memory, and decision-making follow a regular daily rhythm, but this rhythm begins to decline after the age of sixty.
Conversely, immune cells in the brain begin to exhibit new rhythmic activity associated with cellular stress and inflammation. These cells, along with the cells that insulate nerve fibers, become more active in processing damaged proteins during the evening hours—proteins that may be linked to the development of certain neurological diseases.
Some of the findings are consistent with previous research indicating that the brain rapidly reorganizes itself during childhood before reaching a degree of stability in adulthood. However, the new study is distinguished by its observation of molecular changes within the cells themselves, rather than simply studying brain structure.
The study is one of nine research papers published under the PsychAD project, one of which included data from 6.3 million individual cells to study changes associated with diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, vascular dementia, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder.
Another study within the project is investigating why some people with Alzheimer's retain their mental abilities despite clear signs of the disease in their brains. It has shown differences in how some nerve cells respond to stress, which may help in understanding why the disease affects people differently.
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