Tough Times Can Leave Their Mark on the Older Brain

A study published in Neurobiology of Aging suggests negative life experiences may actually accelerate the aging of the brain, reports HealthDay News . "We used a new algorithm to predict brain aging after horrible life events ... and negative life events accelerate brain aging by about one-third of a year for each event," says the University of California, San Diego's Sean Hatton. The study involved more than 350 men with an average age of 62. All were veterans who served between 1965 and 1975, and about 80 percent never experienced combat situations, while almost 88 percent were white. The team asked the subjects about negative "fateful life events," including death of a family member or friend, divorce, separation, miscarriage, financial problems, and serious medical emergencies. The men answered questions twice, five years apart, and also underwent magnetic resonance imaging of their brain. The researchers fed this data to their algorithm to calculate predicted brain age, and the algorithm also controlled for factors such as heart disease risk, alcohol use, socioeconomic status, and ethnicity. Hatton says stressful life events likely affect everyone, but people who eat right and exercise and keep alcohol consumption to healthy levels have a "reduced risk of accelerated brain aging and may be mitigating the impact of these events."