BRAIN TALK DEPT
And of course those of us with Moebius Syndrome--which is a condition, after all, that has to do with the functioning of nerve endings connected to your brain--are always interested in how our brains function.  Today, yet more research is out which suggests that--and this is no surprise--keeping your brain active throughout life prevents your brain from slowing down and misfiring later on:
"People who keep their brains active throughout life - performing brain-stimulating activities like reading, writing, and playing games - appear to have lower levels of the protein that forms brain clogging amyloid plaque. Amyloid plaque is used by doctors and researchers to characterize Alzheimer’s Disease.
While numerous studies have found associations between being physically and mentally active and having lower risk for Alzheimer’s disease, the researchers in a study published in the JAMA Archives of Neurology produced brain scan images to show that lifelong mental activities are associated with lower levels of amyloid deposits in the brain. The study was supported by grants from the Alzheimer's Association and the National Institutes of Health.

Lead author Susan Landau of U.C. Berkeley’s Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, explained that previous studies have shown more cognitive activity associated with a smaller likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease, but that they didn’t use amyloid PET imaging. She noted that previous studies looked at amyloid in the subjects’ brains and “targeted a biological process,” showing an association between life long cognitive activity and decreased amyloid deposits in the brain.
The researchers studied a small group that included 65 healthy adults, ages 50 and older, 10 adults with Alzheimer’s disease (recruited from the Memory and Aging Center at UCSF), and 11 younger control subjects, ages 20 to 30. Participants completed mental tests and were interviewed about how often they engaged in mentally challenging activities throughout their lifetimes.
Subjects’ brains were imaged using PET scans and Pittsburgh Compound B, a radioactive compound that allows the imaging of amyloid plaques in the brain. While using this type of imaging was useful for this study, professor Landau explained that it’s not feasible for use in a typical medical office or hospital setting because the substance must be mixed by a chemist and injected into patients immediately to prevent deterioration of the substance. So while the researchers could use the compound in their carefully controlled study, it's not something that is readily available.
When the researchers ran the data for lifetime cognitive activity, lifetime physical activity with brain imaging results, the most significant association was between past cognitive activity and lower amyloid deposits. They did not find a significant association between physical activity and brain deposits, but Landau concedes that their method of assessing physical activity - using the past two weeks, may have had an effect on their results.
“The key thing is that this isn’t a study of Alzheimer’s patients. It’s important for a bunch of reasons,” Landau explained, “Once you have Alzheimer’s with an accumulation of amyloid, it’s too late to reverse, so trying to figure out what you can do at the earliest stages is important.”
“In completely healthy older people about a third of them have amyloid, healthy, no memory problems,” she said, “and the thinking is that they’re probably at much higher risk than normal people without [amyloid deposits]” Landau says that understanding why some healthy people don’t seem to be impaired, even with deposits, is “the million dollar question”.
While other Alzheimer’s research has looked at brain volume and genetic factors, unraveling the findings on brain activity and deposits is something that Landau says she hopes will spur more research that will reveal how to prevent or eliminate brain deposits. She also said that research is being done to devise brain imaging methods that could allow doctors and researchers to more easily see what is going on inside our brains."

"It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you
really are." -EE Cummings