ELDERLY BRAINS

Regain Flexibility

Dr Jee Hyun Kim’s research into elderly people and cognitive flexibility – the ability to switch attention between thinking about different concepts simultaneously – started with a few simple questions.

Research had shown that exercise and mental stimulation early in life could delay the onset of dementia and other degenerative brain disorders. Jee wanted to find out if exercise could also help cognitive flexibility in old age. Or does the brain, like many older people, become set in its ways? If you’re over 50, overweight and inactive is it too late?

Older people are naturally very good at what is called “crystallised intelligence”, a “concrete” accumulation of knowledge about the world, she explains. However, ageing impairs “fluid

“I think the really important thing is letting people know it’s not too late – even if you’ve had a bad lifestyle in your twenties and thirties and beyond it’s not too late to start changing it.”

The laboratory is now investigating the mechanisms responsible for restoring cognitive flexibility, which could potentially lead to treatments.

It’s targeting epigenetic markers – the molecules that decide which genes are going to be expressed, in this case those prompting the restoration of cognitive flexibility.

The lab is also chasing the markers for neurogenesis – the birth and survival of new neurones in the brain. “It’s only in the 2000s that there’s been really concrete evidence that we have new neurones born every day until the day we die. We think that exercise has encouraged new neurones to settle down and form roots and that’s why cognitive flexibility has been restored.”

“Neurogenesis only takes place in a few areas in the brain – the places that are responsible for cognitive flexibility. That may be the reason we lose it as we age, because neurogenesis slows down.”

The team is hoping that collaboration with Melbourne Neuropsychiatry will take the research from bench to bedside to develop drugs or manipulations to enhance cognitive flexibility.

In the meantime, Jee recommends it’s never too late to start exercising.