Ask your­self the tough ques­tions: Do you mind your brain? Do you know your nog­gin’? Can you claim cere­bral own­er­ship or is your men­tal a rental?

Although these ques­tions are rel­e­vant at vir­tu­ally all lifes­pan stages, firm answers can some­times appear incon­ceiv­able.  Unfor­tu­nately with advanc­ing age, atten­tion to men­tal per­for­mance is often either aban­doned or framed in terms of per­ceived impair­ment and decline.  Now, I have pre­vi­ously shared my mes­sage on mind­ing the aging brain with Sharp­Brains read­ers.  As a cog­ni­tive neu­ropsy­chi­a­trist pri­mar­ily inter­ested in later-life phe­nom­ena, I tend to stick to my area of exper­tise.  Nev­er­the­less, whether you are elder or not, I implore you to take these ideas to heart…do you mind?

Just as brain fit­ness is for all, aging is sim­i­larly uni­ver­sal.  Every thought­ful indi­vid­ual rec­og­nizes the unavoid­able answer to “are you aging?”  How­ever, the answer to “how are you aging?” is less obvi­ous to most, and is even more obscure when con­sid­er­ing lifes­pan cog­ni­tive tra­jec­to­ries.  In fact, no con­sen­sus lex­i­con yet exists to describe the ways in which cog­ni­tion can be mod­u­lated to achieve desired lifestyle or clin­i­cal goals.

In my lat­est pub­li­ca­tion on technology-enabled cog­ni­tive train­ing for healthy elders, I out­line a pro­posed lex­i­con for pos­i­tive cog­ni­tion inter­ven­tions, as well as a frame­work for clas­si­fy­ing puta­tive ben­e­fits of cog­ni­tive train­ing.  Here, I will present these con­cepts with­out regard to age, as they apply equally well to all sapi­ent sapi­ens:

●      Cog­ni­tive stim­u­la­tion refers to non­tar­geted engage­ment that gen­er­ally enhances men­tal func­tion­ing.  Exam­ples might include edu­ca­tional endeav­ors or life review.

●      Cog­ni­tive train­ing refers to theory-driven inter­ven­tion, sup­ported by a con­cep­tual frame­work and spec­i­fied neu­rocog­nitve mech­a­nisms. Exam­ples might include mnemonic strat­egy adop­tion or software-based brain fit­ness pro­grams.

●      Cog­ni­tive reha­bil­i­ta­tion strate­gies address impair­ments result­ing from neu­ropsy­chi­atric dis­or­ders.  Exam­ples might include post-stroke lan­guage ther­apy or tar­geted pro­grams to reme­di­ate atten­tion deficits or dyslexia.

●      Cog­ni­tive enrich­ment fur­ther includes a range of lifestyle behav­iors which can ben­e­fit cog­ni­tive per­for­mance, includ­ing mul­ti­modal brain fit­ness inter­ven­tions involv­ing phys­i­cal, nutri­tional, and social activ­ity.

Although there are sim­i­lar­i­ties to these con­cepts, the dis­tinc­tions are instruc­tive and reflect a syn­the­sis of per­spec­tives.  Pos­i­tive cog­ni­tion is intended to be a descrip­tive term which sub­sumes these as well as enhance­ment or cos­metic approaches, which may involve phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal or direct mod­u­la­tion of neural sys­tems with mag­netic, elec­tri­cal, or opti­cal energy. The essence of pos­i­tive cog­ni­tion is the intent to influ­ence lifes­pan cog­ni­tion toward the opti­mal, or even to extend the range of pos­si­bil­i­ties defined by biology.

Now, what­ever your stage of life and whichever approach to pos­i­tive cog­ni­tion is most rel­e­vant to your goals, be sure to ask your­self some tough ques­tions.  If you come up with good answers, please don’t hes­i­tate to leave your com­ments below.  Of course, if you would like to share your cri­tique of my ideas or of pos­i­tive cog­ni­tion with other Sharp­Brains read­ers, I cer­tainly won’t mind.

—-   Edu­cated and trained at Har­vard, Yale, Colum­bia, and in the heart of Brook­lyn, Dr. Steinerman’s ambi­tion is to con­tribute to the pre­ven­tion of Alzheimer’s dis­ease, one of the great chal­lenges of the 21^st cen­tury.  He is Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Neu­rol­ogy at the Albert Ein­stein Col­lege of Med­i­cine and Mon­te­fiore Med­ical Cen­ter in New York City, where he founded the Cen­ter for Healthy Brain Aging.  He is also the found­ing sci­en­tist of ProG­evity Neuroscience.

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