During his recent visit to the University of Pennsylvania, IOA Visiting Scholar Gagan Wig, PhD, Associate Professor in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences at the Center for Vital Longevity at the University of Texas (UT), Dallas, and UT Southwestern Medical Center, discussed his work in both healthy aging and pathological aging.
Dr. Wig and his colleagues use neuroimaging to study the processes of both healthy and pathological aging, and in particular, they focus on trying to understand how brain networks change over time and how they relate to cognitive decline both in health and in disease.
"As we grow older, our brain networks change over time, and what we're finding is that some of these changes can be prognostic of dementia."
"As we grow older, our brain networks change over time, and what we’re finding is that some of these changes can be prognostic of dementia,” said Dr. Wig. “But, we’re also finding that there also are certain environmental factors that lead some people to have accelerated decline and others to be more resilient to decline.”
Some factors that may play a role are socioeconomic status or level of education, said Dr. Wig. One finding suggests that educational attainment and the presence of a college degree does seem to be a marker of differences in changes in the brain network, but “it is not simply the fact of having a diploma that is going to lead you to be protected,” said Dr. Wig, “but it is probably signaling something else.”
The overarching goal of this research is to try to help identify novel biomarkers of brain health and ultimately use them both prognostically and to better understand how the brain ages over time.
Dr. Wig describes his research more in the video here (~3 minute watch):