Education Helps Ward Off Mental Decline

The more education you have, the better able you may be to prevent a kind of dementia caused by a brain lesion. In a study published in the journal Neurology, researchers said that a person's education level should be considered when a doctor evaluates a brain abnormality known as a white matter lesion. White matter is made of bundles of nerves that carry brain messages, and the white matter lesions have been linked to dementia. In people with more education, however, the lesions didn't seem to have as much of an impact on mental ability as they did in people with less than a high school education.