When you lose brain cells do you become less intelligent?

You’ve seen 50 yr olds that are smart, right?

Neuroscientists have discovered recently that we do grow new brain cells. Certain things stimulate the creation of neurons, like eating blueberries and physical activity.

The best way to keep brain cells from dying off is by using them.

@drdoombot Blueberries?

How many brain cells?

of all the things I’ve lost, I miss my mind the most.

I don’t think the number of brain cells is what determines intelligence, but with the loss of a large amount, there is definitely a change in thinking patterns and memory. My extremely intelligent son suffered a massive stroke a couple of years ago, and his memory is like swiss cheese. He has had to relearn how to talk, walk, and many other things, but he seems to be just a intelligent as ever when it comes to figuring things out.

Good question.

What does it mean to be intelligent? If I take out the part of your brain involved in producing speech (Broca’s area), you’ll still be able to run and ski and do math problems but you won’t be able to form normal sentences. Or if I damage your hippocampus, the part of your brain that you need to make new memories, you’ll be totally normal…except you’ll be unable to learn anything new.

Babies are born with trillions more neurons than they’ll ever need, and these get systematically pruned back as they develop. But we know that during development, people get smarter, not dumber.

So it looks like the number of brain cells you have doesn’t have a whole lot to do with how smart you are.

Making new brain cells is another matter. There are only two parts of your brain that are capable of growing new neurons: the subventricular zone, which sends newborn brain cells to the part of your brain responsible for smell, and the subgranular zone, which sends some to the hippocampus—the part I mentioned before that’s responsible for building new memories.

So to answer your question, I don’t think losing brain cells makes you less intelligent, but to really answer that question you have to define intelligence. And you can grow new cells, but only in specific parts of your brain for specific purposes.

@YARNLADY Sorry to hear about your son. How old is he?

@drdoombot He’s 46 this year. let me give my favorite rant here – if he didn’t live in Sweden at the time, he would be dead. Their full coverage health program (and his partners fast action) saved his life, and are still providing for his recovery.

I like blueberries.

Meanwhile it’s a myth that you can’t gain them back. Science has corrected it’s earlier mistake. As long as you’re healthy you can learn new stuff no matter how old you are, 70, 80, 90 and more. There are people 100 years old and they outsmart young folks who are 20. They learn new things while young folks numb their minds by listening to mindless music and switch off their brains.

The only thing that changes when you get older is that pulling too many all-nighters will slow you down and affect your thinking and learning.