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News & ArtsTuesday, July 26, 2011
Science Old People Have Smaller Brains
Posted by Charles Mudede on Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 8:59 AM
BBC:
The brains of our closest relatives, unlike our own, do not shrink with age.Not long ago, while waiting for the #7 at the bus stop across the street from a funeral home, I watched an ancient woman killing a lone ant with the rubbery end of her walking stick. The ant was ambling away from us, heading toward a bush at the end of the sidewalk. The old woman spotted it, came alive, and tried to hit it (missed), and hit it again (missed). Finally she hit it. Finally it was flattened and severed.The findings suggest that humans are more vulnerable than chimpanzees to age-related diseases because we live relatively longer.
Our longer lifespan is probably an adaptation to having bigger brains, the team suggests in their Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper.
Old age, the results indicate, has evolved to help meet the demands of raising smarter babies.
As we age, our brains get lighter. By 80, the average human brain has lost 15% of its original weight
Because there was no real reason to kill this ant—it wasn't in her house or threatening her in any way—I read it as an act of existential revenge for what life had done to her body—made her so old, so slow, and constantly feeling pain in the joints. For her, life was no longer something to celebrate (watering flowers, feeding fish) but to hate (killing little bugs for no good reason). This BBC report, however, has got me thinking: Did a soft brain play a role in the killing of that ant?
1
Maybe to that women ants were what crows are to you, Charles. Only you don't have a stick big enough.
4
I think I like it better when you write about socialism, Charles - and I don't really care all that much for that.
6
Maybe the old womans actions were the result of generations of human culture viewing nature as a threat to our way of life, and cultural training that these life forms that serve no purpose to our way of life should be killed at every opportunity. Especially in regards to anything that may or may not bite us. I don't think ant bites are that common though.
As for our shrinking brains, how do brains of those in the industrialized world compare to people living more natural lifestyles? How about brain shrinkage in other species?
As for our shrinking brains, how do brains of those in the industrialized world compare to people living more natural lifestyles? How about brain shrinkage in other species?
7
My brother-in-law recently stomped a slug on our doorstep, apparently to entertain us. We are both vegetarians. He is a douchebag.
10
Several assumptions here: first, the reduction in cerebral weight was long ago deduced due to reduced fluid retention in the brain and body.
Second, that the women wasn't an irresponsible psycho, who chose not to remain in respectable physical condition (a common problem in Amerika) and decided to focus all her shortcomings on the nearest form of vulnerable life, that poor ant.
If either the Antman or Aquaman had been around, they would have stomped that old b***h to hell and back.
Second, that the women wasn't an irresponsible psycho, who chose not to remain in respectable physical condition (a common problem in Amerika) and decided to focus all her shortcomings on the nearest form of vulnerable life, that poor ant.
If either the Antman or Aquaman had been around, they would have stomped that old b***h to hell and back.
15
And as I boarded the bus, this giant consumptive phallic proxy, as related to the penis as Wittgenstein's tractus could ever aspire to be, I could spare but a moment to consider the great heaving bossom of the driver and ponder that they, too, would some day meet the inevitable fate of us all.
16
It's amazing how something as "mindless" as an ant can do something so profound as to show us who we are. Who that old lady is and who we are, the observers. All life is scared. Not because of its utilitarian value; it's scared because it shows us who we really are. For better or worse. When I was 6 or 7 I killed a lizard in a garbage can. The world continued on after that event but it shook me later. I cried for a day when I was a kid thinking back about what I had done. Since then I always tried to never kill anything if there's an alternative. That ant didn't die in vain if it allows us to decide if we want to choose to be like that old lady or something else.
18
this is silly. Young people with brains suffering from high levels of aspartame or excessive video games squish ants all the time. Lots of older people are slender and move around more easily than the young
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