Brain Day

Yesterday I went to some very interesting lectures at the university on the brain and the beneficial affect on it of various things like exercise. The first one was Fit body, fit brain by Prof Winston Wybrow who informed us the brain shrinks 5% each decade from the age of 40, affecting things like some types of memory the older you get. The easiest way of fulfilling the continual requirement of the brain for energy (blood flow and oxygen) is by exercising and becoming fit. This way you can increase the blood flow to the brain by 17%. It creates new connections and new cells in the brain. This put 10 years back on to your life so why wouldn't you do it.

Research (the nurses study of l8,000) found that higher levels of physical activity were associated with better cognitive performance and there was a 20% less risk of impairment. In another study of men they found that walking more than 2 miles a day decreases the risk of dementia.

Doing aerobic as well as weight and strength exercise gave the the most benefical results especialy if carried out for 45 minutes a session as opposed to 20 minutes.

Older people from 55-80y can benefit from this with the largest gains made by the 66-70 year olds. High-fitness brains were more efficient, low-fitness brains were more conflicted and dithery. So moral of the story is keep active and fit and get the cognitive benefit of it as ;long as you can.

The next lecture I went to was entitled Being human: the science of memory, consciousness and personality and dealt with the evolution of the brain over time, how it has got bigger , relative to body size. Especially the frontal lobes have got bigger. There are a couple orucial genes out of a total of 22,500 we have in our bodies which either are efficient or non-efficent breakdowners of dopamine, and this MetMet gene is the gene that is implicated in Parkinson's , as opposed to the ValVal one which isn't.

The Celebration Choir performed again to an appreciative audience, showing what music can achieve even when people are sufferering considerable impairment after strokes or have other neurological conditions like Parkinson's.

Prof. Suzanne Purdy gave an interesting lecture after that on The language of music; research on speech and song. She said that brain disease affects the auditory system and speech impairment. Singing out loud activates both parts of the brain and regular choral sining in particular has a number of significant benefits for sustained psychological wellbeing and cognitive benefits as well as being good for one's attention, social support and mood. Singing might even improve a neurologial problem, even active listening to song and music being beneficial too, teh so-called Mozart effect. So there's hope for everyone!

I finished off the day by looking at the various stands of the various interest groups and came away feeling contented with my lot in life. What with the Never too old programme at the YMCA and the Celebration Choir I am maintaining optimum brain fitness of one sort or the other.

Islington Bay on Rangitoto Island

The middle photo was taken on Motutapu Island which has undulating grassy slopes in contrast to Rangitoto's basalt.

Waitemata Harbour

These photos were taken on our Historical Society trip to Islington Bay where Rangitoto is connected to Motutapu Island by causeway. These are photos leaving the confines of the Harbour passing Devonport, North Head and looking back to the Harbour Bridge and Auckland.

Auntie Mollie

Went to a funeral yesterday of a long lost aunt and caught up with cousins Merilyn and Terry, Ian and Wayne, and Stuart's wife Janet. Helen and I stayed with Stuart and Janet on one of our hitching trips to the Dunedin capping week in the 1960s.

Terry boarded with our family at 199 Jervois Rd when he came to Auckland to start an apprenticeship as a mechanic with the Post Office.

Mollie had been in a resthome for over 20 years at Pakuranga , close to one of her sons. She was a cousin of my father and aunt Dorothy. Their mothers were sisters, Eva and Flora McLachlan from Christchurch. She was born Mollie Stuart in 1916 so she was 94. I suppose I last saw her at Auntie Dorothy's funeral (d. 6 May, 2000 at the age of 92) and before that about 30 years ago, at my father's funeral in 1977.

She grew up in Coalgate where her parents had a trucking business, marrying coal miner Fred Mitchell in her early 20s.

They shifted around a bit, ending up at a coal mine in the King Country for several years where I recall our family visiting them in our Morris Minor. We had a bach at National Park where we used to go in the August holidays for skiing at Mt Ruapehu.

Then they shifted to Rotowaro near Huntly, then Mollie shifted to Huntly after Fred died and from there to Pakuranga in 1990. She was a prolific letter writer and Dorothy kept in touch with her in this way. They were favourite cousins. It is a shame our families lost contact but I hope to see cousins Terry and Merilyn again.