Being careful might predict brain health

Photo by Tomography

Does this describe you: Your dishes don’t pile up in the sink, your shirts are folded neatly, your emails don’t have typos? If you said yes — you drive me crazy! But congratulations, your chances for dementia are lower than the average person.

Studying MRI images of 79 volunteers between the ages of 44 and 88 — who also had provided personality and demographic data — the researchers found lower volumes of gray matter in the frontal and medial temporal brain regions of volunteers who ranked high in neuroticism traits, compared with higher volumes of gray matter in those who ranked high in conscientious traits.

via Personality may influence brain shrinkage in aging | Newsroom | Washington University in St. Louis.

If you’re quick to worry, hard to get along with and you feel guilty about all that, then you might want to move on to another post. But what I like about this study — brought to my attention by one conscientious True/Slant reader, ebizjoey — is that the researchers see the correlation could run either direction.

… the results could be seen as “the tail wagging the dog.” That is, it is actually brain changes during aging that influence personality.

The hunt is for predictors, a first step to clinical cures.

We know that there are degenerative processes going on before the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. We want to be able to see if the subtle personality changes might be particular to an early clinical picture and possibly see if one can predict who will become demented based on personality changes.”

The study, however, raises another question: If we train ourselves to be more conscientious, would that preserve gray matter and help us fend off dementia? No answers yet. But if there is something that can be done about it — make sure you do your dishes tonight.