Brain 'changes gear' twice in adult life, at about 24 and again at 60, landmark cell map finds
A landmark map of gene activity in 6.3 million brain cells, published in Nature, reveals the prefrontal cortex shifts gear at about 24 and again at around 60, with clues to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
The human brain undergoes two major “changes of gear” in adult life — one when it reaches maturity at about 24, and another when the biological effects of ageing become much more apparent at about 60 — according to a landmark study published in Nature and other journals on Wednesday, Nature reported.
The findings come from PsychAD, an ambitious consortium led by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, which mapped gene activity in more than 6.3 million individual brain cells in the prefrontal cortex — the region responsible for higher-level thinking, personality and complex behaviour.
The team identified three distinct phases: rapid remodelling during early life, relative stability from about age 24 through mid-life, and a second phase of remodelling beginning at around 60 to 65. In later life, cells that maintain and protect the brain became much more active in dealing with inflammation and abnormal or faulty proteins, and the brain’s orderly 24-hour clock started to break down, The Times reported.
The map also exposed strong similarities in gene activity across Alzheimer’s, Lewy body disease, vascular dementia and Parkinson’s, and identified shared pathways in microglia, the brain’s resident immune cells, for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
“It does not mean the brain suddenly finishes developing on someone’s 24th birthday, or that decline begins at that age,” said Panos Roussos, director of the Center for Disease Neurogenomics at Mount Sinai. “This provides a reference for distinguishing typical aging from disease-associated changes.”
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