Major new study into brain ageing

Efforts to understand the effects of ageing on the brain have been given a major boost with the announcement of a new £5M grant from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) to Cambridge researchers. The funding has been awarded to a team from public health, clinical neurosciences and psychology at the University of Cambridge and scientists from the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit who aim to understand how brain ageing in healthy people affects abilities like language and memory. The new team will be called the Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience (CamCAN) and will be led by Professor Lorraine Tyler from the Department of Experimental Psychology. The ageing process does not have a uniform effect across the brain. For example, older people often struggle to recall the right word in a conversation, but can continue to expand their vocabulary throughout old age. Understanding what structures in the brain account for this variation will be a crucial first step in allowing more people to retain a range of mental abilities throughout their lives. According to Professor Tyler: "Our mental abilities don't suddenly start to decline as we enter retirement.