In a new study from the University of Oslo, researchers found that a college degree won’t keep your brain from shrinking with age.
Over the years, a number of studies have suggested that education might buffer people against age-related declines in memory and thinking. But those findings did not prove a cause-and-effect link.
In the study, researchers asked whether people’s education levels were related to an objective marker of brain aging: atrophy, or thinning, of the brain tissue.
They tested over 2,000 European adults aged 29 to 91. All underwent at least two MRI brain scans over a period of up to 11 years.
As expected, older adults had less brain tissue volume than younger people, including in the hippocampus, a structure involved in memory that is often damaged in the early stages of dementia.
But when it came to education level, there was only a modest correlation with brain tissue volume. And there was no evidence that people with more education had a slower loss of brain volume over time.
And over time, people with more education lost brain tissue just as quickly as those with fewer years of schooling.
The findings suggest that education does not seem to have any causal protective impact on how the brain changes with age.
The study does not, however, discount other brain benefits of education. One theory is that education does not forestall age-related brain changes, but helps people weather them better.
It’s thought that better-educated people might have greater “cognitive reserve,” meaning they are able to maintain more of their mental acuity even as brain tissue itself ages.
But the findings do challenge the notion that education may somehow slow down brain aging.
The team says future work needs to answer the question of whether engaging in mentally stimulating activities over the life span can help slow age-related decline.
The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. One author of the study is Anders Fjell.
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