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Features Cover story
Eight wonders of
the human brain
The more we learn about our command centre, the more
mysteries arise. New Scientist goes in search of the biggest
I
nside your head is an
object capable of feats of
computation, creativity and
understanding unrivalled in
the known universe – and all using
the power of a 20-watt light bulb.
We have made huge strides in
understanding the human brain.
In recent years, we have discovered
that brain cells can regenerate and
pinned down what happens when
you start talking before you know
what you want to say. Yet, the more
we learn, the more we realise how
much we still don’t know. In the
following pages, we explore the
biggest questions about the brain
to reveal the mechanisms and
mysteries of this phenomenal
blob of grey goo.
34 | New Scientist | 22 June 2019
What makes our brain special?
The human brain, we love to tell
ourselves, is exceptional. Other animals
might use tools or solve mazes, but can
they invent computers or write sonnets?
Yet even with our extraordinary mental
prowess, it isn’t easy to explain what
makes the human brain so special. At
around 1.5 kilograms, our brains are
about a third the weight of an elephant’s
and a fifth that of a sperm whale.
If body size is taken into account,
however, our brains are unusually large:
between seven and eight times what
would be expected for a mammal our
size. But this crude measure isn’t enough
to explain our intelligence. The brain-to-
body-size ratio of a capuchin monkey is
higher than that of a gorilla, yet gorillas
are considered smarter.
Clearly size isn’t everything. A more
important metric might be the number
of neurons – the brain’s processing units.
Humans have about 86 billion, according
to Suzana Herculano-Houzel of Vanderbilt
University in Tennessee, who has
pioneered methods to count them.
In fact, primate brains have more
neurons than other mammal brains of
comparable size. Humans, having the
largest brain of any primate, also have
the most neurons of any primate, and
probably any animal. This was possibly
enabled by the invention of cooking,
which releases more calories from food
to fuel this energetically expensive organ.
It isn’t only the number of neurons
that matters, but also where they are.
Our remarkable abilities probably stem
from having more neurons in our cerebral
cortex – the brain’s wrinkly outermost
layer – than other animals, says
Herculano-Houzel. This structure allows
us to develop more complex behaviours
rather than simply responding to stimuli.
“If you have a cortex, you are no longer
a slave to what happens around you. You
have the flexibility to choose to do things
otherwise,” says Herculano-Houzel.
What’s more, her team recently
discovered that across warm-blooded
animals, the number of neurons in
the cortex correlates with longevity.
Herculano-Houzel thinks this is also
a factor in our cognitive superiority:
humans take years to reach maturity. “We
take a really long time to put that brain
together,” she says. “All the while, you are
assimilating information from the world.”
Neurons aren’t the whole story: cells
called astrocytes also play an important
role in intelligence (see “What makes a
brain”, page 40). But the sheer computing
power afforded by our 16 billion cortical
neurons is likely to be the critical factor
behind our cognitive dominance.
Sam Wong >
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LIAM MADDEN

22 June 2019 | New Scientist | 35

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What is consciousness?

Think of the conscious mind as a furnace.
If you are deeply asleep, the flame of
consciousness has died down to a low but
persistent level. In REM sleep, when you dream,
the flame is jumping and burning brightly but
erratically. In a coma, it is a glowing ember.
Consciousness, in other words, exists in a
range of states. One explanation for this is that
full consciousness erupts when many parts of
the brain broadcast information to a network
of neurons known as the global workspace.
When this broadcast doesn’t take place,
sensations remain subconscious. When the
broadcast is incomplete, you get different
levels of consciousness, such as when you are
dreaming or have had a blow to the head.
By studying these states, we should one day
be able to pinpoint the brain mechanisms that
give rise to consciousness. So why then, has
explaining consciousness – how a kilogram
or so of nerve cells conjures up the swirl of
thoughts and emotions that make up our
mental experience – been dubbed “the hard
problem”? One reason is that philosophers
have focused on explaining how we become
aware of experiences. Their term “qualia”
describes the properties of experiences we
have, such as the redness of a strawberry or
the perception of the taste of wine. Trying to
find explanations for qualia has caused no
end of confusion among neuroscientists.
One solution to the problem is to ignore
it. “‘Qualia’ is a term of art, introduced by
philosophers who want to make the questions
about the nature of consciousness answerable
only by spooky, non-biological accounts,”
says Patricia Churchland at the University
of California, San Diego. After all, we don’t
normally talk about our qualia, we talk about
things such as being tired, needing to eat
or even being in love – feelings that have a
straightforward, non-spooky biological origin.
Most people aren’t aware of their qualia
until they are prompted by philosophers,
says Daniel Dennett of Tufts University,
Massachusetts. Dennett not only thinks
that there is no hard problem, he believes
consciousness itself is a kind of illusion.
“It takes some substantial coaxing and cajoling
to get people to ‘notice’ their qualia,” he says,
“and when they think they do notice them,
they are falling for another illusion.”
The illusion, according to Dennett, is this:
PLAINPICTURE/SILVERI
as experiences. But the brain presents to says, the metaphor isn’t exact. When we feel
our consciousness only what matters to us, dizzy or pinpoint where a sound is coming
and does so in a way we can understand. For from, for example, it is the result of physical
example, it is why we see things as being a processes in the brain. Perhaps consciousness
particular colour. The real world isn’t like that, is more like a smartphone screen that presents
but our visual systems effectively colour-code different apps according to the amount of
the world for us, to simplify it. battery left or how much it has been shaken.
Consciousness, in other words, is a partial
illusion, a picture knitted together by the brain
Illusions of the mind as a result of all the inputs it is receiving and
Dennett argues that much as colour is the completeness of the brain broadcast.
an illusion created by the brain, so too is Rowan Hooper
consciousness. “Consciousness is a user
illusion designed by evolution to make life
easier for the brain that must guide a body
through a perilous life,” he says.
Smartphone designers call the screen of
a phone a user illusion. The screen is the “If our brain is
interface to the computer underneath, but the
icons on it – such as the envelope that depicts
a smartphone,
a message – are symbolic, and don’t bear any
relation to the actual hardware and software of
consciousness
the phone’s messaging system. If our brain is a
smartphone, consciousness is the screen, our
is the screen”
interface to the brain. However, as Churchland
Gamma brainwaves
Neural
ripples
Gamma waves
are one of
five types of
brainwave,
each oscillating
at different
frequencies and
associated with
different tasks.
The others are
alpha, beta,
delta and theta
waves
When we
consciously

each of us believes that we have privileged pay attention

access to some remarkable properties of to something,
our own mental states, with which we are what is going
intimately acquainted and which we perceive on in the brain?

36 | New Scientist | 22 June 2019

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Are smarter people’s
brains different?
The short answer is yes. People vary in
their intelligence, so how else could we
account for this if not for differences in the
structure or function of the brain? Exactly
what those differences are, however, is a
matter of intense investigation.
The first thing to note is that people with
larger brains really do tend to have higher
IQs, but there is more to this than size (see
“What makes our brain special?”, page 34).
To find out more, we need to zoom into the
white and grey matter that makes up our
brain. The latter is comprised of the main
bodies of neurons, whereas white matter
is made of the fibres down which they send
signals. Rogier Kievit at the MRC Cognition
and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, UK,
and his colleagues have found that the
volume of grey matter in the frontal lobe
(see diagram, right) is connected to fluid
intelligence, which is the ability to solve
novel problems. They also found this
was linked to the amount of white matter
connections between the two halves of
the prefrontal part of the brain.
It isn’t just the amount of tissue that
counts. One of the most striking features
of the mammalian brain is the way it has
deep folds of grey matter on its surface,
giving it a walnut-like appearance. These
increase its surface area, bringing cells
closer together and allowing them to
communicate faster. And sure enough,
the extent of the folding is correlated with
speed of thought and working memory:
smarter people have more-folded brains.
But this still doesn’t tell us where in the
brain intelligence resides. To find this out,
we can turn to one of the most popular
ideas about its location, something called
parieto-frontal integration theory. This
proposes that the biological basis of
intelligence is a network connecting
different brain hotspots.
Clues about these hotspots can be found
in brain-imaging studies. By examining
how parts of the brain became activated
during cognitive tasks, Ulrike Basten at
Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany
and her colleagues identified a network
connecting 20 different areas in the frontal
and parietal regions that were associated
850,000
with intelligence. People with more grey
matter or higher neural activity in these
regions were smarter.
It feels like we are getting somewhere,
but that result doesn’t just mean that
Know your brain
The human brain operates using specialised processing units
Frontal lobe
Problem-solving, complex
thinking, decisions
Prefrontal
cortex
Planning
complex
TOP BRAIN
behaviour
Creates and
monitors plans
BOTTOM BRAIN
Classifies and
interprets information Temporal lobe
Language, hearing,
processing sensory
information into memories
smarter people have physically different
brains: they seem to have ones that work
more efficiently too. A brain might have the
right chassis for high performance, says
Emiliano Santarnecchi of Harvard Medical
School, “but it’s not that relevant without
an on-board computer regulating how
power is delivered and when to allocate
resources at any given moment”.
Santarnecchi’s work suggests
that intelligence can be boosted by
magnetic stimulation to increase the
brain’s processing efficiency. He also
emphasises the importance of plasticity,
or the ability to change. Perhaps some
people’s brains are inherently more
plastic, more capable of learning.
This is to say nothing of genetics.
Although we know that hundreds of
genes contribute to intelligence, it
is going to take a long time to discover
the nuances of their impact. But then it
was never going to be a simple matter
to find the location of intelligence, the
richest human trait, in the brain, the most
complex known object in the universe. RH
kilometres of
nerve fibres
SOURCE: AI IMPACTS
Alpha brainwaves
Motor cortex
Planning and
executing movement
Parietal lobe
Integration of sensory
information, perception
Occipital lobe
Visual processing
Visual cortex
Auditory cortex
Hippocampus
Memory
What happens
when we think?
Think about thinking, and it doesn’t take
long for your mind to go down a rabbit
hole. Thoughts come naturally to us, but
pinning down exactly what they are is
more complicated. Once they were viewed
as immaterial entities, separate from the
biological matter of the brain. Now we know
that our every thought – whether about a
simple object or an abstract idea – is the
result of electrical signals pulsing through
the brain’s network of 86 billion neurons.
“For me, a thought is simply the
transformation of inputs to outputs by
the brain,” says Ethan Solomon at the
University of Pennsylvania.
But if you ask 100 neuroscientists for a
definition, you will get 100 different answers,
says Avgusta Shestyuk at the University of
California, Berkeley. “‘Thinking’ is an umbrella
term that covers multiple different cognitive
processes,” she says. Some thoughts take the
form of pictures, others seem to be comprised
of words, and many take place at the
unconscious level, without us even noticing.
The latest neurological studies let us tune
into the electrical signals that underlie
thinking. They show that even a basic >
22 June 2019 | New Scientist | 37
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Are you thinking
what I’m thinking?
Theta brainwaves
“Mind-reading
devices are
no longer
the stuff
of science
fiction”
thought involves a surprising amount of
activity, with different brain areas firing
up and sending information to others, and
certain “hub” regions directing the traffic.
Last year, for example, Shestyuk and her
colleagues recorded the journey of individual
thoughts in the brain by measuring the
electrical signals involved when people
were asked to recall and say a word. The first
areas to show activity were the visual and
auditory cortices, which receive signals from
the eyes and ears. Next, the brain’s command
centre – the prefrontal cortex – kicked in.
The harder the memory task, the more of
the prefrontal cortex that became activated,
38 | New Scientist | 22 June 2019
DORIS RUDD DESIGNS/GETTY
and the longer it took to respond, reflecting
the time taken for the region to recruit
other brain areas such as networks where
memories are stored. Finally, the motor
cortex revved up to generate a spoken
response. Surprisingly, this happened
before the prefrontal cortex had decided
on a response. “That’s why we sometimes
start speaking before we know what we want
to say,” says Shestyuk.
So, the prefrontal cortex helps orchestrate
thought processes, but the signals involved
also need to be coordinated. That is the job
of brainwaves: ripples of neural activity
oscillating at different frequencies across
the brain. Solomon’s research reveals that
during a memory test, low-frequency
theta waves in the various brain regions
involved become coordinated, and this
synchronisation probably allows information
to be communicated between the regions.
Our new-found ability to eavesdrop
on individual thoughts means that mind-
reading devices are no longer just the stuff
of fiction. Earlier this year, electrodes on
the brain were used to translate brainwaves
into words spoken by a computer. Techniques
like these could help people with locked-in
syndrome – who are conscious but unable
to move – to communicate. All thanks to the
power of thought.
Alison George
Are you really left
or right-brained?
Chances are you have thought of yourself
as left or right-brained: rational and
logical, or creative and free-spirited.
Appealing as this concept is, it is also
a complete myth.
It is easy to see how the idea was
born. In the 1960s, we discovered that
certain functions occur solely on one
side of the brain. Most people process
language in the left hemisphere, whereas
our emotions are dealt with in the right.
It was soon said that our left hemisphere
held a monopoly over the virtues of logic,
reason and language. The right side of
the brain was responsible for driving our
emotions, musicality and impulsiveness.
From this came the popular maxim that
whichever side of your brain dominated,
determined your personality.
The truth is more nuanced. For
instance, although your left hemisphere
produces complex speech, the right
allows you to understand the emotional
and metaphorical content of those
words – it gives you some linguistic
finesse. Creative thought, on the other
hand, activates a widespread network
of cells that favour neither hemisphere.
Moreover, there is no evidence that
one side of the brain dominates. Jeffrey
Anderson at the University of Utah
has scanned the brains of more than
1000 people while they performed
various tasks and showed that none
revealed a dominance for using one
side of their brain over the other.
Top to bottom
Other ideas abound. The “theory of
cognitive modes”, developed by Stephen
Kosslyn at Harvard University, holds that
our cognitive style is determined by
whether we are top or bottom-brained
(see diagram, page 37). The top regions
of our brain are involved in formulating
and carrying out plans, and revising them
when they go wrong. Lower regions are
largely concerned with processing inputs
from the senses, classifying objects and
events, and giving them meaning.
Everyone uses their whole brain all of
the time, says Kosslyn, but each of us to
some extent relies more on top or bottom
systems, and this affects our behaviour. A
top-brain dominated person, for instance,
will be more of a creative go-getter, but
sometimes ineffective because they
don’t update plans based on current
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circumstances. Bottom-brained types
think through the details of a plan but are
less likely to initiate complex schemes.
Anderson, however, posits that our
personalities probably arise from the way
various brain systems are connected and
how rich those links are. For instance,
people who are open to new experiences
are more likely to get goosebumps when
they see a beautiful sunset. Brain scans
show that they have more connections
between areas that process sensory
information and regions responsible
for our inner voice.
We can feed this information into
deep-learning machines that can make
accurate predictions about personality
~1 petabyte
traits based on a person’s brain scan, says
Anderson. “It’s not about anyone using
the left or right side of the brain more,”
he says, “it’s about subtle differences in
connections across the whole brain.”
Helen Thomson
Is your brain
ever off?
When you rest, it sometimes feels as if your
brain switches off too. It doesn’t. If you are
alive, your neurons are firing. “There is a lot
of processing going on even when you’re not
seemingly doing anything at all,” says Deniz
Vatansever, a cognitive neuroscientist at
Fudan University in China.
It could hardly be any other way. Moment-
to-moment readiness was a matter of life
and death for our ancestors. These days,
most of us don’t have to worry about
leopards leaping from the undergrowth.
But we still need to be alert to dangers and
Estimated memory
capacity of the
human brain
[equivalent to that of the
World Wide Web]
SOURCE: ELIFE, DOI.ORG/GDZ74X
opportunities, and that requires a brain that
is working constantly.
Back in the 1990s, neuroscientists noticed
that people lying quietly in brain scanners with
their eyes closed showed surprising levels of
brain activity. The researchers soon mapped
the brain regions that are most active during
rest, and this became known as the default
mode network. This shows little activity when
we are engaged in tasks requiring attention,
but fires up when we “switch off”, allowing our
minds to wander.
Some evidence suggests that the default
mode network is involved in mulling over past
experiences and speculating about the future.
In that sense, it is vital because daydreaming
is considered to be one of the abilities that sets
us apart from other animals. But the default
mode network does more than that. In 2017,
Vatansever and his colleagues demonstrated
that it underlies our ability to do certain things
without paying attention, such as tying our
shoelaces or driving along a familiar route –
our autopilot mode.
Shutting down
The brain is a hive of activity during sleep,
too. Once consciousness is lost, it gets to work
on all manner of chores: clearing out toxic
molecules, regulating hormone levels and
conjuring dreams, which are thought to
provide a safe environment to simulate
new behaviours that could help during
waking life. The sleeping brain also files
away experiences for later recall.
Even when someone is in a vegetative state,
unconscious and apparently unresponsive
for a prolonged period, their brain continues
to work at some level. When some people in
this state are asked to imagine themselves
playing tennis, for instance, blood flow
increases in brain regions associated with
motor skills, suggesting that the neurons there
are firing. In one case, a patient seemingly
activated those regions on command in
response to yes-or-no questions.
Only when you die do your neurons
completely shut down. Except even then,
there is a final burst of activity, as Jed Hartings
at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio and his
colleagues recently showed for the first time in
humans. When the heart is no longer pumping
blood to the brain, starving it of oxygen,
neurons draw on energy reserves to continue
firing for up to 3 minutes before they produce
one last burst of electrochemical energy. Only
then is the brain switched off for good.
Daniel Cossins >
22 June 2019 | New Scientist | 39
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Does the gut

influence the mind?

We often say we make decisions on the basis
of gut feelings, and this may be truer than we
realise. Nausea, for instance, makes us judge
certain moral violations more harshly. This
is just one of many ways in which our gut
influences what goes on in our head.
It is easy to forget that the gut is a sense
organ, detecting incoming nutrients, toxins
and pathogens, and relaying that information
a hallmark of the disease, seem to appear
first in the gut before spreading to the brain.
We don’t know what triggers it, but it could
be an unknown microbe or toxin. In epilepsy,
changes to the microbiome may explain
why the high-fat “keto” diet prevents seizures
in some people.
Research on the gut-brain connection
is in its infancy, but it has sparked the idea

ROBERT CLARK/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC IMAGE COLLECTION/GETTY

to our brains. It contains some 500 million
neurons that coordinate the process of digestion.
The gut is also home to about 2 kilograms
of bacteria: our microbiome, which influences
every organ in the body, including the brain.
A wealth of studies in mice show that changing
the bacteria in the gut can change behaviour –
in some cases, turning the animals into
antisocial loners.
The microbiome may be particularly
important in childhood, while the brain is
still developing. Mice that lack microbes called
Bifidobacteria in their gut during infancy seem
worse at learning new information, for example.
Evidence from humans is accumulating,
too. One imaging study found that consuming
a fermented milk drink containing various
strains of live bacteria had a profound effect
on people’s resting brain activity and their
responses to seeing faces showing emotion.
This year, a study of 1054 people in Belgium
found that certain types of gut bacteria are
less prevalent in people with depression.
There are also tantalising hints that certain
neurological conditions, such as autism, and
diseases, like Alzheimer’s, may originate
in the gut. In Parkinson’s, synuclein fibres,
of medicines that target the microbiome
to improve our mental health – dubbed
psychobiotics. John Cryan at University College
Cork, Ireland, believes it is an exciting prospect,
but a lot more work is needed to pinpoint
which bacteria are beneficial for which
conditions and how to deliver them to the gut.
How bacteria actually influence the brain
is also something of a mystery, but the picture
is becoming clearer. The tens of trillions of
bacteria in our gut are a hive of metabolic
activity, producing a wealth of chemicals
that we can absorb. Working out which ones
get to the brain and exert effects there is a
big focus of current research. Some bacteria
even feed on GABA, a brain chemical “The human
implicated in depression.
It might seem odd that our brains are
influenced by what is in our guts, but it isn’t
brain starts
so surprising when you consider that these
microbes have always been with us, says Cryan.
to shrink
“I see them as friends with social benefits
because they really affect the social brain
around the
in early life and development,” he says.
“This relationship is very important and
age of 40”
I think it’s been evolutionarily wired.”
Sam Wong

WHAT MAKES A BRAIN

A few years ago, scientists took
human brain cells and injected
them into mice. A year later, the
cells had multiplied and the mice
had got smarter, learning more
effectively than mice with regular
brains. Perhaps that isn’t so
surprising – until you hear that
these brains cells weren’t neurons.
As building blocks of the brain go,
neurons hog the attention. There
are some 86 billion of these stringy
cells carrying electrical impulses
around the brain, helping us to
control our bodies and think
thoughts. But there are plenty
of cells in the brain that aren’t
electrically active. These are
known as glial cells, and they are
at least as numerous as neurons.
A type of glia called an astrocyte
was injected into those mouse
brains, suggesting – not for the
first time – that they could be
important in learning.
Glia used to be considered mere
gap fillers. No longer. “There is
a lot of evidence to say they are
more than just glue,” says Anne
Cooke, chief executive of the British
Neuroscience Association. “They
are the unsung heroes of the brain.”
They come in different types. Small
ones called microglia, for instance,
roam the brain gobbling up foreign “While neurons are still very
material to protect the neurons. important, it seems that glial cells
Astrocytes take care of the are involved in setting the gain on
neurons’ environment too, the system,” says Ed Lein at the Allen
controlling levels of chemical Institute for Brain Science in Seattle.
messengers known as It isn’t all about cells. Holes play
neurotransmitters and helping a part too. Deep inside your head
to repair damage. Evidence is there are slim chambers called
mounting that these cells also have ventricles that produce the fluid
a role in the development of human that bathes the cells of your brain.
intelligence. We know that babies We make as much as 500 millilitres
start off with many connections of this cerebrospinal fluid daily,
between their neurons and that which keeps everything in working
these are gradually pruned down to order by providing cushioning and
create smaller numbers of stronger nutrients, and washing waste away.
signalling pathways. Astrocytes, it There is no doubt plenty more
seems, are involved in this pruning. to be discovered. Just last year,

40 | New Scientist | 22 June 2019

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What makes some brains more
resistant to decline?
It is a harsh fact of life: as you get older,
your cognitive abilities start to wane.
But why is it that some people reach
a ripe old age with little more than the
odd “senior moment”, while others
have far greater mental decline?
The brain starts shrinking around
the age of 40, with cells deteriorating
most quickly in the frontal lobe, the
striatum and the hippocampus – areas
involved in our most complex thoughts,
movement and memory. How resistant
you are to the effects of this decline
is likely to be associated with your
cognitive reserve. This is a kind of
mental buffer that allows your brain
to sustain more damage before you
notice changes in your cognition.
Cognitive reserve isn’t just down to
someone having more neurons than
another person, but also to how well
their neurons engage with each other
Beta brainwaves across different networks in the brain.
Mind reading: This allows the brain to compensate
new technology when age-related decline occurs or
gives us an disease takes hold, and helps reroute
unprecedented information so that the organ can
view of the continue to work optimally. It is a bit
brain in action like boosting the processing power
in a computer: more things can go
researchers identified a new type
of brain cell, dubbed a rosehip
neuron due to its resemblance
to the shape of a rosebush fruit.
It may only exist in humans.
Other secrets may well be
revealed by Lein’s ongoing efforts
to create a map of all the brain’s cell
K.H FUNG/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
types, painstaking detective work
that looks at the genes single cells
express. He has recently studied
the neocortex – the outer part of the
human brain that deals with higher Of all primates’
processes and makes up 80 per cent brains, those of
of its mass – and found 75 different humans have
types of cells there alone. the foldiest
Joshua Howgego outer layer
wrong before you start to notice it
slowing down.
Our environment can also influence
cognitive reserve. A high level of
education offers one of the biggest
boosts, whereas obesity and insulin
resistance seem to reduce it. Several
genes also help us resist cognitive
decline. Tiny genetic variations are
associated with our susceptibility to
Alzheimer’s as well as with how the
brain utilises energy reserves and
reacts to injury and pathogens.
Exercise the mind
Brain shrinkage over time sounds bleak,
but there is some good news. Although
most of our brain cells are created soon
after birth, we can make certain types of
neuron even into our 90s. This ability
might go some way in explaining why
some people’s brains fare better against
the ravages of old age.
There are a few other ways to boost
cognitive reserve. Continuing to
educate yourself throughout your life
appears to provide one of the biggest
benefits, but playing a musical
instrument, socialising, getting the
right amount of sleep and speaking
more than one language also help.
Don’t put your feet up for too long
though: the adage “healthy body,
healthy mind” turns out to be true.
“If you’re looking to maintain brain
health, you need to exercise,” says
Steve Harridge, director of the Centre
for Human and Applied Physiological
Sciences at King’s College London.
Regular workouts bring about
significant improvements in memory,
attention, processing speed and
executive functions, such as planning
and multitasking.
And don’t leave it too late. Richard
Henson at the University of Cambridge
and his colleagues have discovered that
the things we do in midlife – outside of
work and education – make a unique
contribution to brain health in older
age. The activities retirees do in their old
age, however, had less impact. “Midlife
seems to be a good time to intervene, to
nudge people into taking part in more
activities – physical, intellectual and
social – that might bode well for them
20 or 30 years later,” says Henson. ❚
Helen Thomson
22 June 2019 | New Scientist | 41