In the midst of much healthcare reform talk, not enough attention seems focused on ensuring healthcare systems’ preparedness to deal with cognitive health issues -with Alzheimer’s Disease as the most dramatic example- which are predicted to grow given aging population trends.

Today is World Alzheimer’s Day, and the USA Today comments on a new report that makes stark predictions:
Global Alzheimer’s cases expected to rise sharply (USA Today)

- “The 2009 World Alzheimer’s Report, released today, estimates 35 million people worldwide are living with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. The figure is a 10% increase over 2005 numbers.”

- “The number of people affected by Alzheimer’s is growing at a rapid rate, and the increasing personal costs will have significant impact on the world’s economies and health care systems,” said Harry Johns, President and CEO of the Alzheimer’s Association. “We must make the fight against Alzheimer’s a priority here in the United States and worldwide,” he said.

- “The report by London-based nonprofit Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI), an international federation of 71 national Alzheimer organizations (including the Alzheimer’s Association), indicates that the number of people with dementia is expected to grow sharply to 65.7 million in 2030 and 115.4 million in 2050.”

Link to report: Here

The Alzheimer’s Association is organizing multiple Memory Walks to raise awareness and funds. You can learn more and join Here. (Perhaps a good opportunity to organize a “walking book group” as Arthur Kramer suggested in the SharpBrains Guide?)

The City of San Francisco, led by its Department of Aging and Adult Services (DAAS), convened since 2008 an Alzheimer’s/ Dementia Expert Panel to identify gaps and issue recommendations to address the growing crisis in dementia care at the city level, and is about to release a pioneering plan that may well influence public health initiatives in other cities and states. An interim document can be found here: 2020 Foresight-Strategy For Excellence in Dementia Care (pdf)

One of the major areas of focus for that strategy was Education & Prevention, and below we can share a summary of the preliminary findings and recommendations. We will highlight the final report when ready.

ALZHEIMER’S/DEMENTIA EXPERT PANEL

EDUCATION AND PREVENTION SUBCOMMITTEE

FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The subcommittee’s charge was to consider how best to educate the San Francisco community about Alzheimer’s and related dementias to change attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, standards of practice, and outcomes associated with the disease.

Specific topics addressed include:
· Protective factors relating to dementia, including risk factors and brain health
· Early identification of dementia
· Early access to services
· Community education
· Education of professionals and nonprofessionals, including physicians, psychiatrists and psychologists, social workers, nurses, and other caregivers, both paid caregivers and informal caregivers such as family and friends
· Ethical issues
· Policy issues

The dissemination of accurate information about Alzheimer’s and related dementias can play an important role in Read the rest of this entry »

Dear reader and member of SharpBrains’ community,
We want to thank you for your attention and support in 2008, and wish you a Happy, Prosperous, Healthy and Positive 2009!

Below you have the December edition of our monthly newsletter. Enjoy:

Best of 2008

Top 30 Brain Fitness Articles of 2008: We have compiled SharpBrains’ 30 most popular articles, written by thirteen Expert Contributors and staff members for you. Have you read them all?

November-December News: No month goes by without significant news in the field of cognitive fitness. Summarized here are 10 recent developments worthy of attention, including an upcoming brain training product for ice hockey players, my lecture at New York Public Library, and more.

Interviews: Videogames, Meditation

Are videogames good for your brain?: A landmark study by Dr. Arthur Kramer and colleagues has shown that playing a strategy videogame can bring a variety of significant mental benefits to older brains. Another recent study, also by Kramer and colleagues, does not show similar benefits to younger brains (despite playing the same game). How can this be? Dr. Kramer, who has kindly agreed to serve on SharpBrains’ Scientific Advisory Board, elaborates.

Meditation on the Brain: Dr. Andrew Newberg provides an excellent overview of the brain benefits of practices such as meditation. He recommends, “look for something simple, easy to try first, ensuring the practice is compatible with one’s beliefs and goals. You need to match practice with need: understand the specific goals you have in mind, your schedule and lifestyle, and find something practical.”

The Need for Objective Assessments

Cognitive screenings and Alzheimer’s Disease: The Alzheimer’s Foundation of America just released a thoughtful report advocating for widespread cognitive screenings after the age of 65 (55 given the right conditions). SharpBrains readers, probed by Dr. Joshua Steinerman, seem to agree.

Quantitative EEG for ADHD diagnosis: Dr. David Rabiner reports on the findings from a recent study that documents the utility of Quantitative EEG as an objective test to assist in the diagnosis of ADHD. If this procedure were to become more widely used, he suggests, the number of children and adolescents who are inappropriately diagnosed and treated for the disorder would diminish substantially.

Shall we question the brand new book of human troubles?: The fights over the new version of the psychiatric diagnostic manual, the DSM-V, are starting to come to light. Dr. Vaughan Bell wonders why the public debate avoids the key question of whether diagnosis itself is useful for mental health and why psychometrics are simply ignored.

Resources for Lifelong Learning

Education builds Cognitive Reserve for Alzheimers Disease Protection: Dr. Pascale Michelon reviews a recent study that supports the Cognitive Reserve hypothesis – mentally stimulating experiences throughout life, such as formal education, help build a reserve in our brains that contributes to a lower probability of developing Alzheimer’s symptoms.

5 Tips on Lifelong Learning & the Adult Brain: Laurie Bartels asks us to please please 1) challenge ourselves with new learning, 2) remember that neuroplasticity and neurogenesis are hallmarks of our brains, 3) check for mis-learning on an ongoing basis, 4) more visuals, less text, 5) move it, move it – start today!

A beautiful initiative, featured in the New York Times today:
Coming Full Circle:

- “In a typical Montessori classroom, teachers use category-sorting exercises to help young students see patterns and connections. But the participants in this group were mostly in their 80s and on the other side of the cognitive development curve. They are residents at an assisted-living facility for people with dementia called Hearthstone at the Esplanade, which has six other homes in New York State and Massachusetts. Since July the residents have participated in a full-time program of Montessori-based activities designed for people with memory deficiencies.”

- “A common misconception about people with dementia, Dr. Camp said, is that they no longer learn. But they do: residents learn to find their dining room table, for example, well after the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. And because they no longer have the higher brain function they had as adults, he reasoned, they are well suited to Montessori.”

Full article: Coming Full Circle.

Related posts:

- Alzheimer’s Risk and Prevention: the Cognitive Reserve

- Your comments on cognitive training, Posit Science, Alzheimer’s Australia, gerontology, games

A couple of recent research findings are making the media rounds, bringing much needed attention to the high Alzheimer’s rates among Latinos and to preventive approaches based on the Cognitive Reserve – such as, what jobs we choose:

More Alzheimer’s risk for Hispanics, studies find (International Herald Tribune):

- Studies suggest that many Hispanics may have more risk factors for developing dementia than other groups, and a significant number appear to be getting Alzheimer’s earlier. And surveys indicate that Latinos, less likely to see doctors because of financial and language barriers, more often mistake dementia symptoms for normal aging, delaying diagnosis.

- “This is the tip of the iceberg of a huge public health challenge,” said Yanira Cruz, president of the National Hispanic Council on Aging. “We really need to Read the rest of this entry »

Here you have a collection of recent news coverage on brain heath, fitness and training topics:

1- Great Memory Special in National Geographic, including

- Interactive 3D map of the brain

- Memory Game

2- Fascinating What the Beatles Gave Science, by Sharon Begley at Newsweek

- “Even in novices, meditation leaves its mark. An eight-week course in compassion meditation, in which volunteers focus on the wish that all beings be free from suffering, shifted brain activity from the right prefrontal cortex to the left, a pattern associated with a greater sense of well-being.”

3- One of the best editions of Scientific American Mind

- Solving the IQ Puzzle “The 20th century saw the Flynn effect: massive gains in IQ from one generation to another. Now Flynn explains why”

- Anxiety and Alzheimer- A lifetime of stress could lead to memory problems and disease: “Over a period of up to 12 years, volunteers who were anxiety-prone had a 40 percent higher risk of developing mild cognitive impairment than more easygoing individuals did. Mild cognitive impairment is thought to be a precursor for Alzheimer’s.”

4- Exercise builds strong brains, too – USATODAY.com

- “Phillip Tomporowski, a study co-author and exercise psychologist at the University of Georgia in Athens, says exercise “may well improve the underlying mental processes that are involved in a lot of behaviors and academic tasks.”

5- Daily computer game boosts maths- BBC, reporting preliminary results from a small pilot

- “Playing a daily computer game has helped a class of primary school children improve their maths and concentration, a study says.”

6- ADHD and Brain Development- Washington Post

- “Developing more slowly in ADHD youngsters — the lag can be as much as three years — are brain regions that suppress inappropriate actions and thoughts, focus attention, remember things from moment to moment, work for reward, and control movement.”

Following our July and August editions, here you have our Monthly Digest of the Most Popular Blog Posts. Today, October 2nd, we will list the most popular September posts. You can consider it your monthly Brain Exercise Magazine.

(Also, remember that you can subscribe to receive our RSS feed, check our Topics section, and subscribe to our monthly newsletter at the top of this page).

Market News

Education, Training, Health events: some events I will blog about/ speak at over the next 2-weeks.

Brain Fitness and SharpBrains.com in the Press: including a great Washington Post article.

Brains Way Smarter Than Ours (and yours, probably): roundup of relevant news, including some Awards.

News you can use

10 (Surprising) Memory Improvement Tips: on the relationship between stress and memory.

Judith Beck: Train Your Brain to Think Like a Thin Person: a cognitive therapy pioneer tells us about the latest application of brain training: diets.

Brain Wellness: Train Your Brain to Be Happier: our essay to participate in LifeTwo’s Happiness week.

Research

11 Neuroscientists Debunk a Common Myth about Brain Training: summary of our 11 original interviews with leading neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists.

Neuroplasticity 101 and Brain Health Glossary: no one is born knowing it all…check this summary of concepts and keywords that can help navigate through the brain fitness field.

Working Memory: an image that says much: bad and good news.

Best of the Brain from Scientific American: review of this great book.

An online application system is now open for the AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowships.

Corporate Training & Leadership

Carnival of the capitalists with a brain: we hosted this business blog carnival with a brain spice.

Executive Functions and Google/ Microsoft Brain Teasers: examples of what our executive functions are.

Software Product News

MindFit by CogniFit, and Baroness Susan Greenfield: a brain fitness program starting to get traction in Europe.

Penn Treaty First To Offer Brain Fitness Program: today’s press release on another brain training software (Posit Science)’s deal with an insurance provider.

Visualization Software of IBM for the Future of Medicine: Interview: “It’s like Google Earth for the body”. Hopefully it will include the brain.

Brain Teasers

Brain Teasers with a Neuroscience angle: enjoy.

SharpBrains Announcements

Services: we will formally announce soon how we “help companies, health providers, investors, and policymakers understand and profit from the emerging brain fitness field.” But now you know.

Speaking: if your organization needs a good speaker and brain fitness expert, please contact us.

Finally, we are starting to look for qualified guest bloggers to add their perspective. If you are interested, please contact us and let us know about what you would like to write about, and include a brief bio or links to samples. Thank you.

A few years ago I had the chance to meet, and see in action, Hans Rosling (follow the link and play the fascinating clip if you have 6 minutes), at a summit by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. He is a Professor of International Health who developed Trendalyzer software, a tool that brings statistics to live with great visual and animation techniques. Google bought the software last March. You can find it here now.

The Financial Times today has an article titled The hidden beauty of numbers (subscription required), with some great quotes such as “Prof. Rosling works on the premise that the world can never be understood without numbers-or with only numbers” and “He draws an analogy with music: most people would find the written notes dull but love them when they are played. He says he wants to play the statistics and is adamant that he has the eye of the user in mind all the time”.

Here is a full presentation at TED Talks. Enjoy a much more insighful and fun way to see the world!

Two related posts:

• Microfinance, and a very sharp brain
• “Everyone a Changemaker”, Ashoka and Google

What an event yesterday night. My wife and I were fortunate to visit the Google Campus and attend the Sixth Annual North American Fellowship Induction Program of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, a social venture fund where we have been involved for a number of years, and thanks to which (thanks Michele!) my wife and I met in the first place.

18 new Ashoka Fellows/ social entrepreneurs were elected, and after a fun cocktail reception the ceremony began. Sergei Brin (Google Co-founder), Sheryl Sandberg (who helped launch Google Foundation and google.org), Salar Kamangar (the mind behind AdWords) gave introductory remarks. Salar explained how he first heard of Ashoka (through the book How to Change the World, by David Bornstein) and how he saw tremendous similarities between Ashoka and Google: both Read the rest of this entry »