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(AP) — Think achy joints are the main reason we slow down as we get older? Blame the brain, too: The part in charge of motion may start a gradual downhill slide at age 40. How fast you can throw a ball or run or swerve a steering wheel depends on how speedily brain cells fire off commands to muscles. Fast firing depends on good insulation for your brain’s wiring.

Now new research suggests that in middle age, even healthy people begin to lose some of that insulation in a motor-control part of the brain - at the same rate that their speed subtly slows.

That helps explain why “it’s hard to be a world-class athlete after 40,” concludes Dr. George Bartzokis, a neurologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who led the work.

And while that may sound depressing, keep reading. The research points to yet another reason to stay physically and mentally active: An exercised brain may spot fraying insulation quicker and signal for repair cells to get to work.

To Bartzokis, the brain is like the Internet. Speedy movement depends on bandwidth, which in the brain is myelin, a special sheet of fat that coats nerve fibers.

Healthy myelin - good thick insulation wound tightly around those nerve fibers - allows prompt conduction of the electrical signals the brain uses to send commands. Higher-frequency electrical discharges, known as “actional potentials,” speed movement - any movement, from a basketball rebound to a finger tap.

Consider someone like Michael Jordan. “The circuitry that made him a great basketball player was probably myelinated better than most other mortals,” Bartzokis notes.

But while myelin builds up during adolescence, when does production slow enough that we fall behind in the race to repair fraying, older insulation?

Enter the new research. First, Bartzokis recruited 72 healthy men, ages 23 to 80, to perform a simple test: How fast they tapped an index finger. Anyone can do this; it doesn’t depend on strength or fitness.

Researchers counted how many taps the men made in 10 seconds, recording the two fastest of 10 attempts. Then, brain scans checked for myelin in need of repair in the region that orders a finger to tap.

Strikingly, tapping speed and myelin health both peaked at age 39. Then both gradually declined with increasing age, the researchers reported last month in the journal Neurobiology of Aging.

That doesn’t mean the rest of the brain is equally affected. Bartzokis has some evidence that myelin starts to fray a decade or so later in brain regions responsible for cognitive functions - higher-level thinking - than in motor-control areas.

So back to his example of Jordan, who last played professionally at age 40: “Even he started getting older. That circuitry started breaking down a little,” contends Bartzokis. “He can become Michael Jordan the big-shot businessman … but not be Michael Jordan the super-duper basketball player anymore.”

Bartzokis isn’t looking to build a better athlete. His ultimate goal is to fight Alzheimer’s disease. The connection: Building memories requires high-frequency electrical bursts, too, and Bartzokis’ earlier research suggests an Alzheimer’s- linked gene may thwart myelin repair.

But the new research has broader implications because it sheds light on normal aging, says Dr. Zoe Arvanitakis, a neurologist at Chicago’s Rush University Medical Center.

“We knew at some age you peak and there’s a sense it would disintegrate as you grow older. But we didn’t have a sense of where that age would be,” says Arvanitakis, who next wants to see if myelin and cognitive functions show a similar trajectory.

Bartzokis’ research supports a recent report from German scientists, that with age comes a weakening of the system that’s supposed to repair broken myelin, adds Dr. Bradley Wise of the National Institute on Aging.

“Any disruption in these neural circuits and networks will have problems for functioning, ” says Wise, who says the two reports are spurring increased interest into myelin’s role in aging. Until recently, most myelin research has focused on multiple sclerosis, where myelin doesn’t gradually degrade but disappears.

While much more research is needed, Bartzokis has some practical advice:

-Keeping active and treating high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes already are deemed important for good brain health. But physical and mental activity also may stimulate myelin repair, while unused neural pathways wouldn’t send out a “help” signal, he says.

“Remember, these are average people I tested,” Bartzokis says. “Someone that’s really practicing could make it (myelin) last longer because you’re sending the signals to repair, repair, repair.”

-Stress hormones, however, may hurt myelin.

-He’s also testing whether consumption of omega-3 fatty acids - the oils, found in fatty fish, already recommended for cardiovascular health - might help maintain myelin.

—

© 2008 The Associated Press. http://www.physorg. com/news14494821 6.html

A commenter writes (I’m in my thirties, not fifties):

This is hardly a story of ‘decline’.This shows a peak in mental activity at 50 (the problem re myelin replacement, it says here, starts ten years later in areas responsible for higher-level thinking than in brain areas to do with motor control). Mental activity is on the rise until the age of 50. The issue is how steep is the subsequent decline compared to the prior rise; but for all we know from here, you may have similar higher-thinking ability at 70 to what you had at 30. This is out of kilter with the impression usually given about aging, but in line with the experience at least of those older individuals who do keep mentally active.The usual line is that IQ declines after quite a young age, but how important is simple speed of cognition as against the structuring of cognition through experience? [By analogy, in a car race, the driver who is faster but with poor navigation will come way behind the guy who knows the territory and the short-cuts.] From my own experience, my brain power seems to be better, at least in terms of how I can harnass it, in my early 50s than what it was 30 years ago. With age you acquire all sorts of intellectual tools, in-depth knowledge, and realisation of previously hidden connection; little of which was available to you in youth. These aspects more than make up for any memory fade. Having to look up some specifics is not a significant problem when you’re more in command overall.

***

Harnessing The Power Of The Brain

CBS Sixty Minues

Scott Pelley, Reporter

*Nov. 2, 2008*

*(CBS) *Once in a while, we run across a science story that
is hard to believe until you see it. That’s how we felt
about this story when we first saw human beings operating
computers, writing e-mails, and driving wheelchairs with
nothing but their thoughts.

Quietly in a number of laboratories, an astounding
technology is developing that directly connects the human
brain to a computer. It’s like a sudden leap in human
evolution - a leap that could one day help paralyzed people
to walk again and amputees to move bionic limbs. As
*correspondent Scott Pelley* reports, the connection has
already been made for a few people, and for them it has been
life changing.

Scott Mackler was a husband, father and successful
neuroscientist when he received perhaps the worst news
imaginable. At the age of 40, he could run a marathon in
three and a half hours, but it was about that time he
discovered he had ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease.

His brain was losing its connection to virtually every
muscle in his body. The near-total paralysis would also stop
his lungs. He didn’t want to live on a ventilator, so nine
years ago he recorded this message for his two sons.

“I know the future holds lot of love and joy and pride and
that life goes on and I’ll be watching you along the way and
I love you very much and I’ll see ya,” he said in a home video.

Today, Scott Mackler’s mind is sharp as ever, but his body
has failed. Doctors call it “locked in” syndrome. Scott and
his wife Lynn learned to communicate with about the only
thing he has left, eye movement.

To signal “yes,” Lynn says Scott looks at her; to signal
“no,” he looks away.

But recently Scott found a new voice. “Can everyone hear the
PC? I apologize for the quality of the voice,” he asked in
writing.

Scott wrote these words, one letter at a time, with nothing
but his thoughts and the help of what’s called a brain
computer interface or “BCI.” He wears a cap that picks up
the electrical activity of his brain and allows him to
select letters simply by thinking about them. Then the
computer turns his sentences into speech.

“I hate being helpless and when other people put words in my
mouth,” he wrote.

“Well, this is a very unusual interview for /*60 Minutes*/.
We’ve done something we never, ever do, and that is we’ve
submitted the questions in advance because it takes Scott a
little while to put the answers together using the BCI
device,” Pelley remarks. “Scott, I understand that earlier
in the progression of this disease you said that, at the
point you had to go on a ventilator you didn’t wanna go on
anymore, but today you are on a ventilator. And I’m curious
about what changed your mind?”

“Because I can still communicate,” Scott replied, with the
help of the BCI device.

It isn’t fast. It takes 20 seconds or so to select each
letter. Scott told /*60 Minutes*/ it took him about an hour
to write the answers to our 16 questions. But he writes well
enough to continue his research and manage his lab at the
University of Pennsylvania, where he still goes to work
everyday.

“You use this system even to text your sons, for example.
And I wonder what it would mean to your life today if the
system somehow was taken away from you?” Pelley asks.

Scott says he couldn’t work without BCI.

Asked what it has meant to their relationship, Scott’s wife
Lynn tells Pelley, “Well, he’s happier. He can communicate
with not just us, but with the world. This gave him his
independence. His working, intellectual, scientist
independence back.”

The system was developed by neuroscientist Dr. Jonathan
Wolpaw at New York State’s Wadsworth Center.

To understand how the BCI works, Pelley asked researcher
Theresa Vaughan to hook him up to the BCI device.

“And you’ll see there are little white disks scattered
around on your head,” Dr. Wolpaw explained.

Those disks are electrodes that pick up the faint electrical
activity that brain cells create when they communicate with
each other. Vaughan put a conductive gel on top of Pelley’s
scalp to help the electrodes pick up the signals.

Pelley was thinking of the letters of a word that only he
knew. Every time the computer flashed the correct letter on
the screen, he silently thought to himself, ‘That’s it,
that’s the one.’ That feeling of recognition set off a
unique electrical pattern in his brain, which the computer
picked up.

It worked the first time Pelley tried it, without a single
mistake, spelling out “THOUGHT” with the help of BCI.

“You know, I can imagine some people watching this interview
are thinking to themselves, ‘Wait a minute, they’re
connecting the brain to a computer.’ Are we moving in the
direction of reading people’s thoughts? Are we, is this mind
control around the corner?” Pelley asks.

“No, No it is not - it is certainly not mind control and
it’s different from reading people’s thoughts. And it’s
important to realize this requires the cooperation of the
person,” Wolpaw explains.

As remarkable as this is, some scientists believe this
technology is limited, because putting electrodes on top of
the scalp is like listening to a symphony from the street
outside the concert hall. So what would happen if the
electrodes were inside the brain?

That’s what they’re doing at the University of Pittsburgh,
implanting electrodes inside the brains of monkeys. Andy
Schwartz, a neuroscientist at the university, implanted a
grid of electrodes. It’s tiny, but there are 100 sensors,
each listening to a different brain cell, or neuron.

It’s like listening to the symphony of the brain, but now
sitting in the front row. Schwartz has been decoding that
language by watching the monkey’s movement and recording the
corresponding signals in its brain.

Asked what that tells him, Schwartz says, “So there’s a
relationship between how fast the neuron fires and the way
the animal moves its hand. And we’re trying to understand
that relationship so that if we see a neuron firing we can
say, ‘Ah, the animal’s about to make this kind of movement.’”

Once Schwartz started to figure out that relationship, he
was able to connect the monkey’s brain directly to a robotic
arm. Within days, the monkey operated the arm as if it was
his own. “The monkey has both arms restrained. And we’re
recording brain signals from its brain and it’s using those
brain signals to operate this entire arm,” Schwartz
explains. “As well as the gripper”

Schwartz says the monkey is operating the robotic arm with
nothing but his thoughts. Asked what the chances are that a
human would be able to do the same thing, he says, “Oh, we
think a human being could do much better.”

Cathy Hutchinson is well on her way to finding out: she’s
among the first humans to have her brain directly wired to a
computer. Years ago, Cathy suffered a stroke that left her
mentally sharp but trapped inside a paralyzed body and
unable to speak, “locked in” like Scott Mackler.

Three years ago, Cathy volunteered to have the same kind of
sensors Pelley saw in the monkeys implanted in her motor
cortex, which controls movement and is located right on the
surface of the brain. The sensors connect to the computer
through a plug on her head. The system is called
*”Braingate*” and it was created by a team led by Brown
University neuroscientist *John Donoghue.

*”If you look at this square each one of these little black
boxes is the electrical signal coming from one electrode in
the brain,” he explains.

Each one of the little black boxes is a neuron firing. “It’s
its electrical potential. It lets out a 1/1000th of a second
pulse,” Donoghue explains.

Asked how well we understand this language, Donoghue says,
“We have a somewhat of an understanding. We know that
there’s a general pattern of, for example, left/right,
up/down, even fast or slow.”

*Dr. Leigh Hochberg of Massachusetts General Hospital* is
leading the clinical trial. Pelley watched as Cathy showed
what she can do.

She was able to move a cursor with nothing but her mind.
“She’s thinking about the movement of her hand, and she’s
moving the cursor much as if she had her hand on a mouse,”
Hochberg explains.

So if a paralyzed patient thinks to move his or her left
arm, Donoghue says the brain fires those neurons, even
though the arm doesn’t move. “It’s very surprising. It
fires, even though you’re not moving,” he says.

Moving the cursor with her mind is not as fluid or direct as
using a mouse. While /*60 Minutes*/ was there, the cursor
meandered a bit, sometimes overshot, but Cathy always hit
her target in the end: clicking the cursor on a logo to play
music.

“That’s pretty amazing. And so, if Cathy can control a
cursor, she can control anything a computer is connected
to?” Pelley asks.

“That’s the goal,” Hochberg says.

“The lights, the temperature in the room, even, even a
wheelchair at some point,” Pelley adds.

In fact, Cathy has already driven a wheelchair. They haven’t
let her ride in it yet for her own safety, but with monkeys
adopting robot arms and a completely paralyzed person
driving a chair, imagine where this could be headed.

Donoghue envisions this technology will go beyond helping
people communicate.

He believes that amputees will one day be using BCIs to
control robotic arms, and those with paralysis will be able
to move their own arms and legs again. “In spinal cord
injury, that cable that connects the brain to the spinal
cord is broken. We can reconnect that brain, not to the
spinal cord, but directly out to the muscles with a little
computer that’s making up for all the lost parts. And we’ll
see people be able to do things like reach out, hold onto a
cup, bring the cup to their mouth and have a sip of water,”
he says.

As a neuroscientist, Scott Mackler also believes that day
will come. His skullcap interface is a machine that has
given him back his humanity. He’s continued to publish
scientific papers and to speak his mind. “Live life to the
fullest. My wife and I now speak everyday of how we have no
regrets,” he says.

As our interview ended, Scott Mackler asked Pelley to play a
PowerPoint presentation he made to make sure that he got the
last word.

“So I’m going to roll that now and see what he has to say,”
Pelley remarked.

“Please don’t think that I’m an inspiration, because anyone
could do what I’ve done,” Scott said.

“Scott keeps talking about not being courageous. I don’t
particularly think that is true,” Pelley commented.

“I don’t either,” Scott’s wife Lynn added. “I think he’s
pretty brave.”