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change a habit It seems simple on paper, but over the years it becomes more and more challenging. Ingrained routines, automatic responses and a less tolerance for the unexpected They make adapting to new situations not as easy as before. It’s not just a matter of will: something deeper is at play.
What happens to the brain when we age?
As people age, they structural changes in the brain directly influence your ability to adapt to the environmentaccording to a work by the University of Arkansas (USA).
In a new study published in eNeuro, conducted by Tatiana Wolfe and his team, the brain changes throughout two stages of adulthoodwhich could be related to modifications in the adaptive behavior.
The brain structures that help us adapt
The researchers identified key brain areas associated with the adaptation to the environment through the analysis of previous studies of neuroimaging. Subsequently, they turned to a publicly accessible database – the Human Connectome Project – to determine what brain structures allow these areas to communicate and collaborate in promoting the adaptive behavior.
The structures related to the alternation between tasks and the information update about the environment showed a closer relationship with the adaptive behaviors in older adults than in young adults.
Furthermore, an independent set of images from the UK Biobank revealed that the biological characteristics of these structures – on which older people depend to a greater extent – are deteriorate over timewhich could explain the behavioral adaptability deficits that appear in later stages of adult life.
According to the researchers, these results reinforce the idea that brain structures involved in adaptation experience age-related changes and open the door to Possible tools to identify and anticipate these transformations.
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