Neuroscience
"From the Archives", first published in the Digest 13.10.03.
Buying hats may well prove troublesome, but having a huge head also brings a key advantage - it means you're less likely to suffer mental decline in old age.
Catherine Gale (MRC Environmental Epidemiology Unit, University of Southampton) and colleagues recruited 215 men and women aged 66-75 years, measured their head circumference (itself an indicator of brain size) and gave them two sets of intelligence tests - first at the head-measuring session and then again, three and half years later. Old records also detailed the participants' head circumference at birth.
People with bigger heads scored more highly on the intelligence tests, and were less likely to show mental decline as indicated by a lower score at the second testing session relative to the first. In fact, the bottom quartile (25 per cent) of the sample for head size were five times more likely to exhibit mental decline than the quartile with the biggest heads.
Head circumference at birth, by contrast, had no relationship with intelligence or mental decline. This has important implications, because as the authors explained, it suggests "brain development during infancy and early childhood is more important than foetal growth in determining how well cognitive abilities are preserved in old age".
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Gale, C.R., Walton, S. & Martyn, C.N. (2003). Foetal and postnatal head growth and risk of cognitive decline in old age. Brain, 126, 2273-2278.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
Does my head look big in this?
"From the Archives", first published in the Digest 13.10.03.Buying hats may well prove troublesome, but having a huge head also brings a key advantage - it means you're less likely to suffer mental decline in old age.
Catherine Gale (MRC Environmental Epidemiology Unit, University of Southampton) and colleagues recruited 215 men and women aged 66-75 years, measured their head circumference (itself an indicator of brain size) and gave them two sets of intelligence tests - first at the head-measuring session and then again, three and half years later. Old records also detailed the participants' head circumference at birth.
People with bigger heads scored more highly on the intelligence tests, and were less likely to show mental decline as indicated by a lower score at the second testing session relative to the first. In fact, the bottom quartile (25 per cent) of the sample for head size were five times more likely to exhibit mental decline than the quartile with the biggest heads.
Head circumference at birth, by contrast, had no relationship with intelligence or mental decline. This has important implications, because as the authors explained, it suggests "brain development during infancy and early childhood is more important than foetal growth in determining how well cognitive abilities are preserved in old age".
__________________________________
Gale, C.R., Walton, S. & Martyn, C.N. (2003). Foetal and postnatal head growth and risk of cognitive decline in old age. Brain, 126, 2273-2278.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- Why Season Of Birth Is Related To Childhood Intelligence
Countless studies have found that children’s intelligence appears to be related to the time of year they were born in. Some investigators have argued this is because seasonally varying environmental factors like temperature and infections can affect...
- Communicating Off The Top Of Your Head
Forget lip-reading, the way the top of the head moves as we speak also plays a part in communication, a finding that has implications for creating more realistic animated characters. In an initial experiment, Chris Davis and Jeesun Kim presented students...
- Clever Children's Brains Develop Differently
An investigation into the link between intelligence and brain development, rare in its use of a longitudinal methodology and large sample size, has found superior intelligence is associated with particularly dynamic developmental changes to the cortex...
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A report from the BBC: Brain function can start declining 'as early as age 45' BBC 5 January 2012 Last updated at 20:08 ET [snip] "The brain's ability to function can start to deteriorate as early as 45, suggests a study in the British Medical...
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Wilson RS, Arnold SE, Tang Y, & Bennett DA. Odor identification and decline in different cognitive domains in old age. Neuroepidemiology. 2006; 26(2): 61-67. Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center, Rush Institute for Healthy Aging, and Department of Neurological...