Old People Can Produce As Many New Brain Cells As Teenagers (independent.co.uk) 91
Long-time Slashdot reader Futurepower(R) shares this article about a newly-published study which counters previous theories that neurons stop developing after adolescence:
Healthy men and women continue to produce new neurons throughout life, suggesting older people remain more cognitively and emotionally intact than previously believed, researchers found. For decades it was thought that adult brains were hard-wired and unable to form new cells. But a Columbia University study found older people continued to produce neurons in the hippocampus -- a part of the brain important for memory, emotion and cognition -- at a similar rate to young people....
However, the researchers also noted fewer blood vessels and connections between cells in the older brains, which Ms Boldrini said "may be linked to compromised cognitive-emotional resilience" in the elderly.
The article suggests these newest findings may be hotly debated.
"They come just a month after a University of California study suggested adults do not develop new neurons."
However, the researchers also noted fewer blood vessels and connections between cells in the older brains, which Ms Boldrini said "may be linked to compromised cognitive-emotional resilience" in the elderly.
The article suggests these newest findings may be hotly debated.
"They come just a month after a University of California study suggested adults do not develop new neurons."
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Frankly, nobody has any evidence you're even from the US, you don't speak English particularly well
Why would anyone need such evidence? Has Slashdot suddenly become restricted to US citizens?
And I'm confused. Surely not speaking English particularly well would be evidence that a person is a US citizen.
We can (Score:5, Funny)
Just don't want to.
Re: (Score:2)
Given a choice between a negative finding and a positive one, I'm going to lean towards the positive one.
It is more reasonable to find what did find than it is to find what you didn't find, after all.
A lot of people really want the old theory to hold water, but it doesn't. If they wanted to find a new theory, this field would be moving forwards faster.
This study shows it is their own fault they don't learn anything new, it can't just be blamed on age. We only have to wait for the old generation to die for n
Re: (Score:1)
We already know everything about the brain. That's why we have AI.
Re: (Score:1)
No one has said anything of the sort. Weak trolling is weak.
Re: (Score:2)
Temporary Resident (Score:2)
But, I thought "science is settled" and 97% of scientists agree?
Science never settles, it is only ever temporarily resident. That's why when the laws change it has to move.
Not at all a surprise (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
OK, gramps, but that's because you forgot where you put your glasses and can't see how young he still is.
Re: (Score:2)
This is why I drink bourbon - alcohol is a preservative.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I have no brain. :(
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
> Why can a child learn a new language easily while older brains can't?
Stephen Pinker hypothesizes in The Language Instinct that certain brain structures develop in childhood which are dedicated to learning language and understanding how to use it, and after the child internalizes his/her native language, these structures are repurposed for more abstract thinking.
I don't know if that's been supported by any science, though.
Re: (Score:2)
The idea that a child can learn a new language faster than an adult or even old person: is just a myth.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There are thousands ... which one do you want, if you are so lazy to look for yourself?
Re: (Score:2)
The purpose of the citation is to see what you choose, so we can laugh at you when it says something else.
A person who independently checks will just find out you're full of shit; children do learn languages faster. Much faster.
I don't doubt you read about a study, and that the study says what the study says. The part that is obvious bullshit is your broad phrasing.
The closest you'll get to something that supports your claim is stuff based on brain scans, rather than actual learning, that suggests that the
Re: (Score:2)
The question was not if a child learns a language faster (which it actually does not, it takes about 3 years to be considered fluent, and the first year they barely speak) but the claim that older people learn slower.
Language learning in school is slow because (at last when I was in school) the teaching methods are wrong.
If you use a modern language teaching method, you are half fluent in 3 month and fluent in 6 ... even if you learn japanese or chinese with their pictogram characters, you easy learn about
Re: (Score:2)
Few adult learners of languages are fluent, and almost none get to the same level in a language that native speakers of that language do, regardless of the teaching method. It's also the case that children learn their first (and sometimes second, if they grow up in a bilingual environment) almost automatically, without being taught; whereas very few adults can learn a language (well or otherwise) that way.
BTW, I'm talking about spoken languages. Learning to read--whether it's Chinese writing or otherwise-
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, you reiterate the "common knowledge".
That does not make it true.
If you crash land in China, and get picked up by natives: three years later you speak chinese. There are thousands of documented cases of that. Albeit, always in medieval times, when language learning was so much easier :D
In historic times it was common for travelers/traders to speak half a dozen languages. They picked them up traveling ...
Re: (Score:2)
You want evidence? Try this: https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com]
I'm assuming your para about thousands of people learning Chinese in three years is a joke. I believe there are also documented cases in medieval times of Krakens and Griffins and Basilisks, oh my...
And yes, people can pick up a half dozen languages. If you add together the languages I've learned (and mostly forgotten), you could come up with a number like that: Spanish, German, Tzeltal, Shuar, French, Italian (plus of course English). (It he
Re: (Score:2)
As I said before: this is just a "stupid" reiteration of "common knowledge", which is wrong.
Just like the "common knowledge" that brain cells don't regrow or other neurons.
That the later "fact" is wrong is quite often a topic on /.
The former fact is quite often in news sites, too. Language learning is easy, there is no special skill yo have a s child that gets lost when you grow up. A no brainier actually. How and why would that evolutionary work? Or biologically work? Some dead switch switching off a prima
Re: (Score:2)
Why can a child learn a new language easily while older brains can't?
Because several stages of language acquisition (such a going from emitting a broad range of phonemes to just the "correct", and "correctly pronounced" phoneme set of the first language) seem to work by keeping the relevant neurons alive while the irrelevant ones die off.
Before the end of each "critical period" for some particular aspect of the language, a child's brain is a language learning engine. After, learning that aspect of some lan
Re: (Score:2)
Says who, exactly?
Of course you can. It may not be quite as easy but you can. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either a liar or a fool.
Re: (Score:2)
Children only learn faster. Your mistake is in making a false dichotomy between "can ... easy" and "can't."
People of any age can learn a new language; if learning a new language was easy when you were a teenager, it will still be easy when you're middle aged. It will just take you longer. OTOH, your life experience will enrich your enjoyment of your new language skills, so it shouldn't actually seem that much harder to you.
Adults who have a really hard time learning a new language probably suck at language
Re: (Score:2)
The saying in biology is "use it or lose it". Older brains are just out of practice.
Because they have been thinking, learning and solving problems for over 50 years - is that your argument?
Re: (Score:2)
Because they haven't been, they've just been saying that they have been. Really, they just spew whatever words they think they remember, or whatever colloquialism their social group considers a Virtuous response to the situation.
Just find out what they have strong feeling about, where they claim to have some "ideas," and take the exact same situation but with the labels removed, and where the subject and object are reversed compared to their bias, and most people will consistently spew the same pattern of s
Re: (Score:2)
So, like maybe three or so? (Score:5, Funny)
I mean, how many old people do you know that can still produce teenagers? Unless they already have them chained up in their basement or something.
Re:Well no wonder (Score:4, Insightful)
Old people brains show signs of "compromised cognitive-emotional resilience", or as it's otherwise known "becoming immune to the world".
No doubt because they have learned enough about the world to understand how terrifying and irrational it can be.
Teenagers have brain cells? (Score:3)
Science finds us something new every day.
They used to say the same about our bodies (Score:2)
For instance too many people still believe that someone over, say, 40 years of age "can't build muscle" and "can't be physically fit" and "can't lose weight and will just get fat and stay fat" but that's all been disproven over and over again whether anyone wants to believe it or not -- it just requires you to be willing to do the work and suffer through the training to attain a lev
Re: (Score:2)
we don't understand the brain (Score:3)
The day before Dad died of the effects of dementia, he was very lucid and philosophical even though he could barely control his motor functions to speak, move his head, could move one hand only slightly or any other body control. It was difficult to hear what he said, but not for his lack of trying.