A five-year study of the brains of 136 subjects showed that changes in the brain precede symptoms and diagnosis of cognitive impairment and Alzheimers.

The participants, all over the age of 65, ranked as cognitively normal on tests given at the start of the study. Brain scans of the participants were also taken at the start of the study. The participants were followed with neurological and cognitive testing over the study period.

At the end of the study, 23 participants had developed MCI (mild cognitive impairment) and, of those, 9 went on to be diagnosed with Alzheimers.

Researchers discovered that changes in the brain had taken place as much as four years before the subjects had started to show cognitive impairment. The brain scans showed a decrease in grey matter in those participants who went on to develop memory problems while they still tested normal for cognitive function.

Researchers hope that the results of the study will help in identifying people at risk of developing MCI which leads to Alzheimers.

The study is published in the April 17, 2007, issue of Neurology®, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

People who exercise are known to do better on memory tests. Now researchers at Columbia University Medical Center have discovered why those who exercise have better memory retention.

Researchers used an MRI technique developed at Columbia to study the brains of people who had just exercised. They were able to identify the growth of new neurons in the dentate gyrus, a region of the brain within the hippocampus.

Exercise targets the dentate gyrus, which underlies normal age-related memory decline that begins around age 30 for most adults. The dentate gyrus is the one area of the brain where new neurons are generated, and exercise improves this process.

“Our next step is to identify the exercise regimen that is most beneficial to improve cognition and reduce normal memory loss, so that physicians may be able to prescribe specific types of exercise to improve memory,” said Scott A. Small, M.D., associate professor of neurology at Columbia University Medical Center and the study’s lead author.

Columbia Study - New Reason to Hit The Gym: Fighting Memory Loss

A certain amount of stress and worry is inevitable in everyone’s life. Coping with stresses and maintaining a healthy outlook leads to emotional stability. When stress and worry lead to excessive negative thinking, it’s called neuroticism. How you deal with stress and worry and whether or not you allow your negative thinking to take over and increase can have an effect on your health.

In a study that followed 1600 men over 12 years, it was found that those whose neuroticism increased with age were much more likely to become more stressed and their risk of dying from cancer and heart disease increased.

However, the study also showed that even if you are naturally fretful, learning to relax and control negative thinking can reverse this risk and give you a survival rate similar to that of an emotionally stable individual.

Study links propensity toward worry to early death