A new study has found that brain cell density does not actually change with age, as was previously thought.
It is well-established that the brain shrinks as we grow older, but it was never entirely clear why—a loss of brain cells was usually seen as the source, but previous findings found specific regions did not lose brain cells at all.
Shrinkage comes from other sources
Thanks to a new ultra-high field MRI, a team from the University of Illinois at Chicago has found that in cognitively normal adults, brain cell density is preserved with age.
“The information provided by these 9.4-Tesla scans may be very useful in helping us to detect tiny losses of brain cells and the reduction in cell density that characterizes the early stages of neurodegenerative diseases that can take decades to develop before symptoms appear, like Alzheimer’s disease,” said Dr. Keith Thulborn, the director of MRI research in the UIC College of Medicine and the lead author of the report.
In Alzheimer’s, symptoms generally only arise after one has had the disease for many years. This is because the brain itself is remarkable; when parts of it are damaged, through Alzheimer’s or with a stroke, it can often compensate by having another portion of the brain take over the responsibilities of the damaged region. However, it can only compensate for a certain amount before it has reached its limits, and that is when symptoms appear—after years of damage.
“If we can identify when Alzheimer’s pathology starts, the efficacy of new drugs or other interventions to slow or prevent Alzheimer’s disease can be tested and monitored when the disease starts, instead of after it’s developed for 20 or 30 years and becomes clinically apparent,” Thulborn said
There are many other implications of this new technology as well. “We can use the 9.4 T to look at brain cell loss in real time in patients experiencing stroke, or to see whether chemotherapy for brain tumors is working in higher resolution that is just not available using the current 3 T clinical scanners,” said Thulborn.
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