Diet and exercise will keep your brain young – depending on your genes

Will a regular exercise routine and a healthy diet keep your brain young? It depends on your genes. People who have certain forms of genes that play a key role in brain ageing seem to respond better to healthy lifestyle interventions. These make it "more likely that exercise or adhering to a Mediterranean diet will have a greater impact on your cognitive ageing," says Sandrine Thuret at King's College London. Cognitive ageing is thought to rely on neural stem cells in the brain's hippocampus which continue to produce new neurons throughout life, and are thought to play an important role in forming new memories.