The boss knows best

If your boss acts like they are smarter than you and your colleagues, it is most likely because they are.

A new study conducted by the University of New South Wales, finds taking on a managerial role at work may help a person’s brain to stay healthy by protecting its memory and “learning centre” well into old age.

The findings help to refine the understanding of how staying mentally active promotes brain health, and wards off diseases such as dementia.

Researchers identify the link between managerial experiences in a person’s working life and claim many of the managers who were examined at the age of 80 years old, had a larger hippocampus – the area of the brain responsible for learning and memory.

The research was recently presented at the Brain Sciences UNSW symposium where Dr Michael Valenzuela, leader of Regenerative Neuroscience at UNSW’s School of Psychiatry, discussed the study’s findings.

Dr Valenzuela says the “unique” mental demands of the act of ‘managing’ people helps to establish a clear relationship between the number of employees a person may have supervised or been responsible for, and the size of the hippocampus.

He claims the stressful task of being a manager, which often requires continuous problem-solving and “a lot of emotional intelligence” is not as bad for one’s health as first thought.

“Over time [these findings] could translate into the structural brain changes we observed,” Dr Valenzuela says.

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