As reported sciencealert.com one of the keys to a long and healthy life can be calm the brain without a lot of neural activity. According to a new study that studied post-mortem brain tissue of centenarians and its differences with the brain of people who died at the age of 60-70 years, excessive brain activity and exposure to stress can cause great harm to the body and even cause premature death.
Active use of the brain resources may not always lead to positive results
How stress affects the human brain?
According to the journal Nature, the current trend to use brain to prevent it from aging may not always be useful, but even harmful at the cellular level. In order to verify this rather unusual statement, researchers from Harvard Medical school analyzed brain tissue donated to brain banks human people between the ages of 60 and 70 years and centenarians who have lived to 100 years and older.
In the result of the study discovered that people who died before 80 years old, had a lower level of protein, which plays an active role in the process of relaxing a person than the same protein from brain tissues of the aged. Found a protein able to inhibit genes involved in the initiation of brain activity, which may indicate that people in long-term stress are more prone to the occurrence of such dangerous diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease than others.
See also: Scientists have found a brain area, which is emerging Alzheimer’s disease
A similar experiment conducted on mice showed that those rodents who do not have enough of rest, often stood out from the rest with paroxysmal bursts of unwarranted activity, which suggests that hyperactivity of the brain directly affects the overall health of a living being and can lead to uncontrollable changes in the behavior of animals and humans, but the mechanism of appearance of such side effects are still unknown.
Long-term stress and excessive activity of the brain can lead to uncontrollable changes in the behavior of people and animals
Bruce Yankner, Professor of genetics and neurology at Harvard Medical school, who heads the experiment on mice, argues that the study of the mechanisms leading to hyperactivity, can help to discover new ways to treat neurodegenerative diseases and even the aging. So, one of the main conclusions of the study was detection of harmful neural activity that occurs with age while in prolonged stress or in a state of hyperactivity, which not only makes the brain less efficient, but also harm the human physiology that as a result reduces life expectancy.
If you like this article, I invite you to join our official channel on Yandex.Zen, where you can find more useful articles from the world of science and technology.
It was found that with age, a person has to use more brain circuits than with young people in order to accomplish the task. The consequences of this phenomenon remain unclear, but it is likely that such patterns of activation can indicate a less efficient brain functioning in the elderly.