Does white/grey brain matter changes in aging make you bad at learning?
In: Biology
I’m not sure if they really know that yet. I believe the current working theory is that you are born with some number of neurons, but no heavily defined paths. In your infancy, connections between neurons are easily formed and dropped, and as you age neurons which receive no activity begin to go dormant as formed pathways are strengthened. This makes learning more difficult, but certainly not impossible.
The issue with this theory is brain plasticity. It is well-documented that some people who have received a traumatic event and suffered brain damage as a result can re-learn forgotten abilities, sometimes even in places of the brain which are not specialized for that task. I do not know if we know whether this activates formerly dormant neurons, or if existing neurons simply take up more tasks.
Also, it is well known that myelin sheaths, which protect neuron shafts, degrade over time. A thicker myelin sheath provides a less lossy pathway for the electrical component of neuron activity. As the sheath degrades, the neuron may not be able to fire enough to reach the next in the chain, so information can be lost along the way. Thinking can become foggier and slower, which of course would hinder learning.
But that’s just what I think I know as a neurobiology hobbyist 🙂
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