The Impact of Indifference on Brain Health: Study Finds Smaller Brain Size in Those Who are Apathetic

2023-09-12 23:12:36

The higher the level of indifference, the smaller the gray and white matter capacity of the brain.

Entered 2023.09.13 08:05 Views 0 Entered 2023.09.13 08:05 Modified 2023.09.13 08:11 Views 0 People who are indifferent to everything have been found to have a greater risk of developing dementia. [사진=클립아트코리아]

People who want too much attention from others, or ‘indulgence’, are a problem, but being too indifferent to worldly affairs is also considered one of the ills of modern society. However, this indifference has been shown to be detrimental to brain health.

Losing curiosity regarding new things or things and becoming indifferent and apathetic causes the brain to atrophy. This is the result of a study conducted by a research team at the U.S. National Institutes of Health on 4,354 elderly people with an average age of 76 and no symptoms of dementia.

The research team imaged the study participants’ brains with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and conducted a survey using the 15-item Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) to measure the degree of ‘indifference’.

The results showed that people with higher levels of indifference had smaller brain sizes. Those with two or more items corresponding to apathy had a 1.4% smaller gray matter volume and a 1.6% smaller white matter volume in the brain.

Gray matter is related to memory, and white matter is related to communication between regions in the brain. The research team explained, “When the brain atrophies like this, it becomes susceptible to brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease.” Alzheimer’s disease is the most common degenerative brain disease that causes dementia.

The results of this study (Structural MRI correlates of apathy symptoms in older persons without dementia) were published in the international journal ‘Neurology’.

1694561292
#Turned #interest #worldly #affairs.. #Risk #dementia #increases #insensitive #people #study

Share:

Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
LinkedIn

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.