If you find it difficult to remember things as you get older, it’s partly because your brain is shrinking gradually, year by year.
Previously, researchers believed that the brain atrophies more slowly in people with higher levels of education.
The assumption has been that education itself kept the brain active, because you are learning new things.
Now a new large study shows that this is not the case.
Your brain volume shrinks just as much with age, whether you spent six years at university or left school after the primary grades.
Brain researcher [Anders Martin] Fjell admits that he wasn’t that surprised by this finding.
“We theorized that this could be the case. We’ve already seen the connection between brain structure and parents’ education in children. This relationship is probably established very early and is more dependent on developmental processes than aging processes.
Many studies have shown that people with more education are less likely to develop dementia at the end of their lives.
Fjell believes that this must be due to conditions that have existed from early in life.
