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If someone tells you that you have a big head, take it as a compliment.
A team of scientists says that human brains appear to be getting bigger every year, and they speculate that increasing brain size as we age could help prevent dementia.
An international research team led by the University of California, Davis Health arrived at this discovery after studying MRIs of people born in the 1930s to the 1970s.
In the resulting research, JAMA Neurologyresearchers found that babies from the 1970s had nearly 15 percent more brain surface area and a 6.6 percent increase in brain volume than babies from the 1930s.
Scientists obtained MRI data from the Framingham Heart Study, a long-term health study that began in 1948. They specifically looked at brain scans of 3,226 subjects.
In addition to an increase in brain volume and surface area, researchers also observed an increase in the size of parts of the brain associated with memory and learning.
So what effect does our growing brain have?
Judging by almost everything in the headlines, it’s not clear whether larger brains make us more intelligent.
But researchers believe that having a larger brain could be a benefit, as it may be related to brain health. A study published in the journal 2016 found that as the population ages, the total number of people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease is increasing, but the proportion of people newly diagnosed is decreasing every decade. New England Medical Journal We also looked at data from the Framingham Heart Study.
“Larger brain structures like the ones we observed in our study may reflect improved brain development and improved brain health,” said Professor of Neurology at the University of California, Davis, who led the study. lead author Charles DeCarli said in a statement. “The larger the brain structure, the greater the brain reserve, which may buffer against the later effects of age-related brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.”
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