Elderly drivers could hold a key to the neurology of depression

As masses get older , their driving skills tend to belittle . Failing eyesight and heavy medication are often blamed for this phenomenon , but there might be a neurological grounds … and it could facilitate us well sympathize natural depression and schizophrenic psychosis .

Driving requires us to be able to spot any aim come at us on the road , which think of we need to be able to see the foreground well . But as humans get on , their head shift by from that , and older mass become far more adept at see large - graduated table movement off in the length . It ’s a insidious but key difference in how younger and older people see the reality … and one of them stool driving far more hard .

This shifting occurs because the halfway temporal ocular area of our brain decreases in power as we get older , and without this area it becomes more hard to filter out out background stimulant . research worker were able to sham this decrease in ocular area function in younger people , and the volunteer all became far more cognizant of larger movements in the background signal of their imaginativeness . But there was n’t any concurrent reduction in foreground imaginativeness , entail the volunteers ’ head had to suddenly consider with far more visual stimuli , which would make paying attention during driving much more difficult .

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As the researcher point out , similar types of visual sense and attention problem have been see among those with depression and schizophrenia :

“ These paradoxical resolution mimic special population determination , in particular patients with a history of depression who demonstrate sound - than - normal motion perception of large design coupled with normal perception of small , moving stimulation . ”

This suggests that the share of the brain responsible for visual processing also meet a role in these conditions . Figuring out what these areas do and why they malfunction could go a long manner to expert treatments for depression and schizophrenic disorder .

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