Articles

With the advent of old age, incidences of misplaced keys and embarrassing moments of forgotten names occur more often. It is well understood that certain cognitive skills start to decline and others improve as you inch closer to becoming a senior citizen. Yet, there are some 70-year-olds who can still beat those at 50 on a memory test. How do they retain such abilities and how can that knowledge be used to our advantage?

Results emerging from a unique study ‘Midlife in the United States’ (MIDUS), have shown that there might indeed be ways to slow down the inevitable slide. Margie Lachman, psychologist at Brandeis University and principal investigator for MIDUS, found education to be the most essential element of mental fitness. For middle-agers, a university degree obtained during younger days can slow the brain’s aging process by up to a decade. Read more »

“Like a spider on a tube”: this is how Professor Bruno Péault, Chair of Vascular Regeneration, describes his particular cell of interest. Pericytes, literally surrounding cells, can be found, as their name suggests, wrapped around small capillaries in the human body. They are stem cells, capable of generating cell types such as cartilage, bone, and smooth muscle and, although they were first described over a century ago, their true importance wasn’t established until very recently. Read more »