Hav­ing a sense of con­trol over one’s life may be one of the most cru­cial mark­ers of suc­cess­ful aging. Aging indi­vid­u­als who feel in con­trol seem to know more about their health, be more likely to take actions to pro­tect it and thus enjoy health­ier and longer lives.

Stud­ies have shown that peo­ple feel less in con­trol as they get older. Could cog­ni­tive or brain train­ing boost such feel­ing and reverse or at least coun­ter­act that trend?

A recent study says the answer is yes. Read the rest of this entry »

Dr. Arthur Kramer is a Pro­fes­sor in the Uni­ver­sity of Illi­nois Depart­ment of Psy­chol­ogy, the Cam­pus Neu­ro­science Pro­gram, the Beck­man Insti­tute, and the Direc­tor of the Bio­med­ical Imag­ing Cen­ter at the Uni­ver­sity of Illinois.

I am hon­ored to inter­view him today.

Dr. Kramer, thank you for your time. Let’ start by try­ing to clar­ify some exist­ing mis­con­cep­tions and con­tro­ver­sies. Based on what we know today, and your recent Nature piece (Note: ref­er­enced below), what are the 2–3 key lifestyle habits would you sug­gest to a per­son who wants to delay Alzheimer’s symp­toms and improve over­all brain health?

First, Be Active. Do phys­i­cal exer­cise. Aer­o­bic exer­cise, 30 to 60 min­utes per day 3 days per week, has been shown to have an impact in a vari­ety of exper­i­ments. And you don’t need to do some­thing stren­u­ous: even walk­ing has shown that effect. There are many open ques­tions in terms of spe­cific types of exer­cise, dura­tion, mag­ni­tude of effect but, as we wrote in our recent Nature Reviews Neu­ro­science arti­cle, there is lit­tle doubt that lead­ing a seden­tary life is bad for our cog­ni­tive health. Car­dio­vas­cu­lar exer­cise seems to have a pos­i­tive effect.

Sec­ond, Main­tain Life­long Intel­lec­tual Engage­ment. There is abun­dant prospec­tive obser­va­tional research show­ing that doing more men­tally stim­u­lat­ing activ­i­ties reduces the risk of devel­op­ing Alzheimer’s symptoms.

Let me add, given all media hype, that no “brain game” in par­tic­u­lar has been shown to have a long-term impact on Alzheimer’s or the main­te­nance of cog­ni­tion across extended peri­ods of time. It is too early for that-and con­sumers should be aware of that fact. It is true that some com­pa­nies are being more science-based than oth­ers but, in my view, the consumer-oriented field is grow­ing faster than the research is.

Ide­ally, com­bine both phys­i­cal and men­tal stim­u­la­tion along with social inter­ac­tions. Why not take a good walk with friends to dis­cuss a book? We lead very busy lives, so the more inte­grated and inter­est­ing activ­i­ties are, the more likely we will do them.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today we are for­tu­nate to inter­view Dr. Jerri Edwards, an Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor at Uni­ver­sity of South Florida’s School of Aging Stud­ies and Co-Investigator of the influ­en­cial ACTIVE study. Dr. Edwards was trained by Dr. Kar­lene K. Ball, and her research is aimed toward dis­cov­er­ing how cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties can be main­tained and even enhanced with advanc­ing age.

Main focus of research

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez: Please explain to our read­ers your main research areas

Jerri Edwards: I am par­tic­u­larly inter­ested in how cog­ni­tive inter­ven­tions may help older adults to avoid or at least delay func­tional dif­fi­cul­ties and thereby main­tain their inde­pen­dence longer. Much of my work has focused on the func­tional abil­ity of dri­ving includ­ing assess­ing dri­ving fit­ness among older adults and reme­di­a­tion of cog­ni­tive decline that results in dri­ving difficulties.

Some research ques­tions that inter­est me include, how can we main­tain health­ier lives longer? How can train­ing improve cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties, both to improve those abil­i­ties and also to slow-down, or delay, cog­ni­tive decline? The spe­cific cog­ni­tive abil­ity that I have stud­ied the most is pro­cess­ing speed, which is one of the cog­ni­tive skills that decline early on as we age.

ACTIVE results

Can you explain what cog­ni­tive pro­cess­ing speed is, and why it is rel­e­vant to our daily lives?

Pro­cess­ing speed is men­tal quick­ness. Just like a com­puter with a 486 proces­sor can do a lot of the same things as a com­puter with a Pen­tium 4 proces­sor, but it takes much longer, our minds tend to slow down with age as com­pared to when we were younger. We can do the same tasks, but it takes more time. Quick speed of pro­cess­ing is impor­tant for Read the rest of this entry »

Roundup of inter­est­ing news in this emerg­ing field:

1) Brain Health Lead­ers Team Up to Pre­vent Crashes.

2) Adults Improve Crit­i­cal Pro­fes­sional and Per­sonal Skills Through New Cog­ni­tive Train­ing Program.

3) Nature Neu­ro­science Pod­cast and Lon­don Taxi Drivers.

4) What Have You Changed Your Mind About, lately?.

5) The 2008 Mind & Life Sum­mer Research Insti­tute starts accept­ing applications.

6) The Mind & Life Insti­tute has announced the 2007 Fran­cisco J. Varela Research Award Recip­i­ents. Read the rest of this entry »

Jef­frey Gonce, a Psy­chol­ogy teacher at Red Land High School (West Shore School Dis­trict, PA) just asked his stu­dents to “com­plete a project describ­ing a recent brain (or genetic) study that affects behav­ior.”  The stu­dents could opt to post their arti­cles online, and Jef­frey was kind enough to send us a link to read the results.

We enjoyed the over­all level of the essays (you can read them all here), and truly enjoyed read­ing a beau­ti­ful, well-researched and bet­ter writ­ten essay by Alexan­dra M, 15. Which, inci­den­tally, quotes from one of our favourite pop­u­lar sci­ence books on the brain, John Ratey’s A User’s Guide to the Brain.

Enjoy!

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March 2, 2007

Alexan­dra M

It’s Christ­mas morn­ing, and your brother rushes down­stairs to see what “Santa” brought him. The morn­ing goes by in a flurry of col­or­ful wrap­ping paper and stringy rib­bons until all that’s left is a big present in the cen­ter of your brother’s lap. The present that “Santa” brought him. As he rips open the paper, “Santa’s” chest swells with pride, he feels good and happy. As the brother runs around scream­ing about his new remote con­trolled F-14 Tom­cat, “Santa” laughs and cleans up. But why did he feel that way? Read the rest of this entry »