Study Finds Human Brains Have Grown In Size Over Last 75 Years, Is It Good News For Dementia Patients?

Over millennia, the size of the human brain fluctuates, but recent research found a significant increase in brain size between individuals born in the 1930s and those born in the 1970s. A 2016 study by UT Health San Antonio neurologist Sudha Seshadri and colleagues showed that although the incidence of dementia had decreased since the late 1970s, the prevalence—or the overall number of cases—had grown. The scientists chose to look at whether the Framingham citizens’ brains showed signs of these changes because they reasoned that larger brains would result from improved health throughout development. “Larger brain structures like those observed in our study may reflect improved brain development and improved brain health,” as per UC Davis’s Charles DeCarli, first author of the study. “A larger brain structure represents a larger brain reserve and may buffer the late-life effects of age-related brain diseases like Alzheimer’s and related dementias.” The issue remains as to how brain development across generations appears in different populations.