Studies Indicate That the Size of the Human Brain Decreases With Age, Whereas That of the Chimpanzee Does Not
The sizes of specific regions of the human brain have been shown to decrease with age, unlike the brains of chimpanzees, our closest living relatives. The reduction of the brain size with age in humans may be as a result of an evolutionary trait brought on by our extended life spans. This information has been discovered by researchers from America who have published results detailing their usage of MRI scanning equipment to scan the brains of chimpanzees. The researchers made their findings available online via the publication: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, released on the 25th of July in the year 2011.
The main author of this research was an associate professor of anthropology at George Washington University, Doctor Chet C. Sherwood. The doctor made an announcement to the press saying:
While other animals attain impairments in their cognitive abilities and the atrophies of their brains as they get older, it would seem that the human brain experiences a much more drastic degeneration with age.
In order to conduct extensive research on the way that these findings are linked with brain size, Doctor Sherwood and his colleagues embarked on the very first research of this nature. The team made comparisons between the total regional brain sizes of chimps of various ages with results obtained from readings taken from humans.
As a result of the lack of data on the volumes of chimp's brains, the research team decided to make use of MRI to calculate the volumes of the chimpanzees brains in cross sectional samples of ninety nine mature chimp brains ranging from the ages of ten to fifty one.
Among the attributes calculated by these researchers were things such as maximum neocortical white matter, frontal lobe gray matter, the hippocampus and many other such calculations.
The researches proceeded to compare this data with data obtained from human brain structures that was obtained in humans aged from twenty two to eighty eight years. The researchers came to the conclusion that the reduction in human brain size with age is linked to evolutionary traits and the vast life spans of human beings.
It was discovered by the researchers that although the volume or size of the chimpanzee's brain structures does not vary much with age, human brain structures decrees noticeably with age.