New research from the US suggests that some aspects of cognitive or mental performance such as speed of thought, reasoning and spatial visualization peak at age 22 and start to decline at around age 27. The study was the work of Professor Timothy Salthouse of the University of Virginia and is published in the April issue of the journal Neurobiology of Aging.

Researchers in the US studying mice with and without amyloid-beta plaques in their brains (the plaques that are characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease) found that contrary to current thinking, the plaques don’t just damage the neurons they are close to but may well affect signalling in other parts of the brain through their influence on extensive networks of astrocyte brain cells.

A study led by researchers in Canada who analysed post mortem brain samples of suicide victims with a history of being abused in childhood found changes in DNA expression that were not present in suicide victims with no childhood abuse history or in people who died of other causes. The affected DNA was in a gene that regulates the way the brain controls the stress response.

After brain injury, there is an elevated risk of epilepsy for more than ten years after the physical damage occurred. Therefore, there could be an opportunity to protect these patients from epilepsy, concludes Dr Jakob Christensen, Department of Neurology, Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark, and team in an article published Online First (The Lancet) and in an upcoming edition of The Lancet.

A study to be presented at a conference in the US in late spring suggests that staying mentally active as in reading magazines, or pursuing a craft or hobby like knitting, pottery, and even playing computer games, in later life may delay or prevent memory loss: however watching too much TV does not.

US scientists studying brain cells in mice found that a single cell in the front part of the brain can hold fleeting traces of memories on its own for as long as a minute and perhaps even longer: it behaves a bit like RAM, the short term memory storage used by computers.

When it comes to controlling hunger urges, a groundbreaking brain-imaging study from the US suggests that men’s brains are better able to do so, possibly explaining gender differences in rates of binge eating and obesity and why women find it harder to lose weight.