Age and how it makes everyone stupid

First of all... WHOO-HOO Obama!!! For ending the stem-cell research ban. I LOVE that man!!!

Second of all, I almost got irritated with myself, because I thought I forgot to bring this paper I read last night I wanted to write about for all you nerds: No differential effect of age on brain matter volume and cognition in bipolar patients and healthy individuals. Which is obviously related to my previous discussions. This is what I pulled from it.

1. Treatment may result in increase in cortical and hippocampal grey matter (the treatment that works, I'm assuming). Cortex = gray matter (or grey... sorry, this is still an amusement to me), and hippocampus is good for short term memory and spatial navigation. Although it's the memory impairment which seems to be the important bit, by what they're saying.

2. Concerning age, no accelerated decline in gray matter volume in BPs compared to normals. BUT BPs lost the matter in the prefrontal (motor integration, cognition, and decision-making) and temporal (auditory crap, also connected to hippocampus and therefore memory) regions, and normals in cerebellum (movement coordination) as well as the same regions. Damn it though, it was less. I will address this.

Okay. Yeah, us BPs have crap decision-making skills at the worst of times. And everybody says crap cognition, so perhaps there's some of that, but I still stand by my original statements (concerning connections and flexible thinking). I think my hearing's pretty good, but I'll have to admit to some crap memory - I think my boyfriend gets offended when I don't remember things about his schedule or family. BUT I remember school stuff pretty well. For a semester at least. Don't ask me about orgo from four years ago, but I think that's probably everyone. Of course, if I do it again and again and again (example: neuro crap) then of course I remember. Repetition/practise and all that.

BUT meds are good for you, according to them. Which I'm sure I'll have a rant about at some point. I got dumped because I started taking medication at one point. Yeah, he was a jerk. But that's another story for another time.