Americans may worry about heart disease, stroke and diabetes, but they downright dread Alzheimer’s disease, a recent survey found. For good reason. One in eight adults over 65 is affected by the disease. Those who are spared know they may end up with the burden of caring for a parent or a spouse who is affected. Even though the number of older adults with dementias is rising rapidly, only a few drugs that have been approved to treat symptoms are on the market, and they slow down the disease but do not cure it.

Researchers, however, are more optimistic than ever about the potential of the aging brain, because recent evidence has challenged long-held beliefs by demonstrating that the brain can grow new nerve cells.

“For a long time, we held the assumption that we’re born with all the nerve cells we’re ever going to have, and that the brain is not capable of generating new ones - that once these cells die we’re unable to replace them,” said Molly V Wagster, chief of the Neuropsychology of Aging branch of the National Institute on Aging. “Those assumptions have been challenged and put by the wayside.”

The birth of new nerve cells, she said, “has been shown to occur in the adult — not only in adult rats and monkeys, but also in older adult humans.” Most of the areas that show neurogenesis and that have been investigated so far are important for learning and memory, particularly the hippocampus, she added.

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