Training-Induced Brain Structure Changes in the Elderly

By J. Boyke, J. Driemeyer, Christian Gaser, Christian Büchel, Arne May. Journal of Neuroscience, 2008

674 citations recorded by the source corpus.

It has been suggested that learning is associated with a transient and highly selective increase in brain gray matter in healthy young volunteers. It is not clear whether and to what extent the aging brain is still able to exhibit such structural plasticity. We built on our original study, now focusing on healthy senior citizens. We observed that elderly persons were able to learn three-ball cascade juggling, but with less proficiency compared with 20-year-old adolescents. Similar to the young group, gray-matter changes in the older brain related to skill acquisition were observed in area hMT/V5 (middle temporal area of the visual cortex). In addition, elderly volunteers who learned to juggle showed transient increases in gray matter in the hippocampus on the left side and in the nucleus accumbens bilaterally.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e7293a072e769a3314f3d12ce7b95762243707e9

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In Cognitive Neuroscience

Citations in the corpus

Networks of anatomical covariance (2013, background): “Some authors have indeed demonstrated longitudinal changes in morphology following training in manual dexterity (Boyke et al., 2008; Draganski et al., 2004; Driemeyer et al., 2008; Haier et al., 2009), musicianship (Hyde et al., 2009a, 2009b) and language acquisition (Carreiras et al., 2009) but…”
The underlying anatomical correlates of long-term meditation: Larger hippocampal and frontal volumes of gray matter (2009, methodology): “Supplemental voxel -based GM volume analysis (local approach): co-varying for age Although meditators and controls were carefully matched for age, we conducted an additional VBM analysis comparing meditators against controls (as described above), while co-varying for age.”
Aging, training, and the brain: A review and future directions (2009, positive): “increases in volume in regions where young adults do not (Boyke et al. 2008; Colcombe et al. 2006).”
Effects of memory training on cortical thickness in the elderly (2010, background): “Recent evidence suggests that older adults exhibit intact structural neuroplasticy detectable by MRI (Boyke et al., 2008).”
Maze training in mice induces MRI-detectable brain shape changes specific to the type of learning (2011, background): “These changes are detectable as early as 7 days after training (Driemeyer et al., 2008) and appear to occur in elderly as well as young subjects (Boyke et al., 2008).”
Neuroplasticity subserving motor skill learning (2011, positive): “…memory consolidation, which correlates with the amount of stage II nonrapid eye movement sleep (Walker et al., 2002), has been mostly demonstrated for explicit motor sequence learning (Fischer et al., 2005; Korman et al., 2003; Walker et al., 2002; but see Brawn et al., 2010; Rickard et al., 2008).”
Engineering Students' Intelligence Beliefs and Learning (2014, background): “Recent studies have shown that the human brain has the capability to change structure on the basis of experiences (Boyke et al., 2008).”
Models of the Aging Brain Structure and Individual Decline (2012, background): “Interestingly, studies on learning-induced structural plasticity have revealed localized brain changes after intense training of motor skills or acquisition of abstract knowledge (Draganski et al., 2004, 2006; Boyke et al., 2008; Scholz et al., 2009; Engvig et al., 2010).”
Motor control and aging: links to age-related brain structural, functional, and biochemical effects. (2010, positive): “Long-term sensorimotor training is associated with increases in gray matter volume for older adults (Boyke et al., 2008).”
Musical training as a framework for brain plasticity: behavior, function, and structure. (2012, methodology): “, 2011), and in a cortico-cortical motor network using combined pulses on premotor and motor cortices (Buch et al., 2011).”