【推荐1】“Tooth loss and gum disease, which is inflammation (发炎) of the tissue around the teeth that can cause shrinkage (萎缩) of the gums and loosening of the teeth, are very common, so evaluating a potential link with brain diseases is incredibly important. Our study found that these conditions may play a role in the health of the brain area that controls thinking and memory, giving people another reason to take better care of their teeth,” said study author Satoshi Yamaguchi, Ph.D. of Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan.

The study involved 172 people with an average age of 67 who did not have memory problems at the beginning of the study. Researchers found that the number of teeth and amount of gum disease was linked to changes in the left hippocampus of the brain. For people with mild gum disease, having fewer teeth was associated with a faster rate of brain shrinkage, which was the same for people with severe gum disease having more teeth. After adjusting for age, researchers found that for people with mild gum disease, the increase in the rate of brain shrinkage due to one less tooth was equal to nearly one year of brain aging. By contrast, for people with severe gum disease, the increase in brain shrinkage due to one more tooth was equal to 1.3 years of brain aging.

“These results highlight the importance of preserving the health of the teeth and not just maintaining the teeth,” Yamaguchi said. Though the study does not prove that gum disease or tooth loss causes diseases like Alzheimer’s, it only shows an association. Yamaguchi added, “Future studies are needed with larger groups of people.” The current experiment involved only a small group of people in one region of Japan, and that too from one particular region of the world.

【推荐2】We all know what a brain is. A doctor will tell you that the brain is the organ of the body in the head. It controls our body’s functions, movements, emotions and thoughts. But a brain can mean so much more.

A brain can also simply be a smart person. If a person is called brainy, she is smart and intelligent. If a family has many children but one of them is super smart, you could say, “She’s the brains in the family.” And if you are the brains behind something you are responsible for developing or organizing something. For example, Bill Gates is the brains behind Microsoft. Brain trust is a group of experts who give advice. Word experts say the phrase “brain trust” became popular when Franklin D. Roosevelt first ran for president in 1932, Several professors gave him advice on social and political issues facing the U. S.

These professors were called his “brain trust.” These ways we use the word “brain” all make sense. But other ways we use the word are not so easy to understand. For example, to understand the next brain expression, you first need to know the word “drain.” As a verb to drain means to, remove something by letting it flow away. So a brain drain may sound like a disease where the brain flows out the ears. But brain drain is when a country’s most educated people leave their countries to live in another. The brains are, sort of, draining out of the country.

However, if people are responsible for a great idea, you could say they brainstormed it. Here, brainstorm is not an act of weather. It is a process of thinking creatively about a complex topic. For example, business leaders may use brainstorming to create new products, and government leaders may brainstorm to solve problems. If people are brainwashed, it does not mean their brains are nice and clean. To brainwash means to make someone accept new beliefs by using repeated pressure in a forceful or tricky way. Keep in mind that brainwash is never used in a positive way.

【推荐3】Lifelong Musicians Have Better Hearing

Playing a musical instrument throughout your life protects your hearing, a Canadian study suggests. The study, which was published in Psychology and Aging, carried out hearing tests on 74 adult musicians and 89 non-musicians.     1    

Action on Hearing Loss said all people - including musicians - should try to prevent hearing damage.    2     By sixty, 10-30% of people have moderate hearing loss. By eighty, that goes up to as many as 60%. Problems are particularly seen in the central auditory processing system, which is associated with understanding speech, especially when there is background noise.

Then a research, by a team at the Rotman Research Institute in Toronto, looked at adults were affected as they aged. They chose both musicians and non-musicians from the age of 18 to 91 and divided them into different groups based on the age. Again musicians were significantly better at picking out speech against noise in all the age ranges.

    3     Benjamin Zendel, who was part of the research team, said: “We found that being a musician may contribute to better hearing in old age, probably due to musicians using their hearing systems at a high level on a regular basis. This advantage widened considerably for musicians as they got older when compared to similar-aged non-musicians.”

This study suggests that musicians might be more able to deal with the consequences of hearing loss.    4     As Dr. Ralph Holme said, all people-including musicians-should try to prevent hearing damage in the first place. It’s necessary for everyone who plays a musical instrument or listens to loud music to wear hearing protection.    5