Brain func­tion can start declin­ing ‘as early as age 45′ (BBC Health):

“The brain’s abil­ity to func­tion can start to dete­ri­o­rate as early as 45, sug­gests a study in the British Med­ical Jour­nal.  Uni­ver­sity Col­lege Lon­don researchers found a 3.6% decline in men­tal rea­son­ing in women and men aged 45–49. They assessed the mem­ory, vocab­u­lary and com­pre­hen­sion skills of 7,000 men and women aged 45 to 70 over 10 years.

The Alzheimer’s Soci­ety said research was needed into how changes in the brain could help demen­tia diag­noses.  Read the rest of this entry »

Here you have a round-up of recent news on how cog­ni­tive and affec­tive neu­ro­science find­ings are start­ing to inform edu­ca­tion and health across the lifespan:

Pedi­a­tri­cians issue a call to aid chil­dren fac­ing ‘toxic stress’ (LA Times)

Teach­ers as Brain-Changers: Neu­ro­science and Learn­ing (EdWeek) Read the rest of this entry »

AARP recently released a list of Top 5 Best Books for Brain Fit­ness. SharpBrains.com is hon­ored to have pub­lished one of those Top 5 books and to present this Live Q&A Series for you to ask ques­tions to the authors of 3 of those best books on brain fit­ness. Par­tic­i­pants will sub­mit writ­ten ques­tions, mod­er­a­tors will select the most impor­tant and rel­e­vant ques­tions, and book authors will write their answers for every­one to read.

• Novem­ber 1st, 2011, 2-3pm ET: Dr. Gary Small, author of The Mem­ory Bible
• Novem­ber 15th, 2011, 2-3pm ET: Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, co-author of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fitness
• Novem­ber 22nd, 2011, 2-3pm ET: Dr. Paul Nuss­baum, author of Save Your Brain
• (in Span­ish) Novem­ber 29th, 2011, 2-3pm ET: Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, co-autor de The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness Read the rest of this entry »

Music can soothe and trig­ger mem­o­ries. It is as such that music is most often used with Alzheimer’s patients. A new study sug­gests that music may also be used as a booster for learn­ing new things, an abil­ity very impaired in those with Alzheimer’s.

Indi­vid­u­als with Alzheimer’s and matched con­trols were pre­sented with unfa­mil­iar songs lyrics: half of the lyrics were sung and half were merely spo­ken. Par­tic­i­pants were then pre­sented with the lyrics they had heard as well as with new ones, and asked whether they rec­og­nized any lyrics.

Alzheimer’s patients’ mem­ory was much bet­ter for sung lyrics than for spo­ken ones. There was no dif­fer­ence between the two types of lyrics for the healthy older adults.

Why do peo­ple with Alzheimer’s seem to ben­e­fit from musi­cal stim­uli? Read the rest of this entry »

We are hon­ored to announce the fol­low­ing Spon­sors and Part­ners of the upcom­ing 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit: Retool­ing Brain Health for the 21st Cen­tury (March 30th — April 1st, 2011). And we are look­ing for more, so please con­tact us if inter­ested! Read the rest of this entry »

It is not easy to take care of some­one suf­fer­ing from Alzheimer’s Dis­ease. Qual­ity of life for both patients and care­givers usu­ally dete­ri­o­rate as the dis­ease pro­gresses. This issue also has an eco­nomic side: the care pro­vided by fam­ily mem­bers is val­ued at nearly $144 bil­lion. What would hap­pen if care­givers could not carry on any­more? As this arti­cle from the Huff­in­g­ton post reminds us, there is no pill to help fam­i­lies stay together longer, and have hap­pier lives. How­ever there are a grow­ing num­ber of non-pharmacologic inter­ven­tions that could achieve this. Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s note:
Ken­neth S. Kosik, MD, and Ellen Clegg, authors of a recent book on Alzheimer’s Dis­ease pre­ven­tion and treat­ment, force­fully pro­pose a new frame­work and model for brain care: What about set­ting up “cog­ni­tive shops” as “a sort of one-stop shop­ping for every­thing from Alzheimer’s dis­ease pre­ven­tion to guided care for mild or mod­er­ate dis­ease”. What fol­lows is the thought-provoking con­clu­sion sec­tion from their book “The Alzheimer’s Solu­tion. How Today’s Care Is Fail­ing Mil­lions and How We Can Do Bet­ter” (repro­duced with per­mis­sion), not very dif­fer­ent from the “brain fit­ness cen­ter” model we have talked about in the past.

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Chap­ter 10. CONCLUSIONS

Just as the idea of hos­pice care rev­o­lu­tion­ized death and dying in Amer­ica, the idea of bundling many aspects of Alzheimer’s care under one roof in a cog­ni­tive shop could change the way we approach this dire disease—one that has no cure and leaves no sur­vivors. Cer­tainly, the scope of the prob­lem poses med­ical and eco­nomic risks for the coun­try. These risks, and poten­tial steps for a solu­tion, were charted by the bipar­ti­san Alzheimer Study Group in the spring of 2009. The report, issued by the Alzheimer Study Group co-chaired by for­mer con­gress­man Newt Gin­grich and for­mer sen­a­tor Bob Ker­rey, minces few words. Read the rest of this entry »

The L.A. Times reports today the neg­a­tive results of the lat­est ran­dom­ized trial test­ing the effects of DHA sup­ple­ments on Alzheimer’s symp­toms (DHA is an omega-3 fatty acid).

The study … exam­ined 402 peo­ple with mild to mod­er­ate Alzheimer’s. They were ran­domly assigned to take 2 grams a day of omega-3 cap­sules con­tain­ing docosa­hexaenoic acid (or DHA) or a placebo cap­sule. The par­tic­i­pants were fol­lowed for 18 months, and their cog­ni­tive and func­tional abil­i­ties were reassessed. They also under­went MRI to look at the brain.

There was no ben­e­fit seen in the patients tak­ing omega-3 fatty-acid sup­ple­ments in either brain vol­ume or cog­ni­tive function.

Com­ments: Does this study mean that DHA or omega-3 in gen­eral are not good for the brain? No! This study sug­gests that tak­ing DHA sup­ple­ments after Alzheimer’s diag­no­sis is not help­ful. Prior evi­dence shows that omega-3 con­sump­tion (espe­cially DHA) long before the onset of Alzheimer’s symp­toms reduces the risk of devel­op­ing the dis­ease. Indeed, sev­eral stud­ies have shown that eat­ing fish (the pri­mary source in our diet of omega-3 fatty acids) is asso­ci­ated with a reduced risk of cog­ni­tive decline or dementia.

The authors of the JAMA study also spec­u­late that DHA sup­ple­ments could be used as a treat­ment for peo­ple who have not yet been diag­nosed with Alzheimer’s but are already devel­op­ing demen­tia pathol­ogy in their brain: “Indi­vid­u­als inter­me­di­ate between healthy aging and demen­tia, such as those with mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment, might derive ben­e­fit from DHA sup­ple­men­ta­tion, although fur­ther study will be nec­es­sary to test this hypoth­e­sis.” 

You have heard that phys­i­cal exer­cise is good for the brain. How much exer­cise are we talk­ing about? Can the ben­e­fits be seen both for chil­dren and adults? In Fit­ter bod­ies = fit­ter brains. True at all ages? Dr. Pas­cale Mich­e­lon answers these ques­tions for you, based on lat­est sci­en­tific studies.

We need fun ways to get out the couch more and exer­cise both phys­i­cally and cog­ni­tively. What about set­ting up community-based adult play­grounds, such as this one in Beijing?

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Peo­ple of all ages read SharpBrains.com and this monthly update, so we are prepar­ing a series of arti­cles on Brain Health across the Lifes­pan. The series will include 4 parts:

Each part will include sur­pris­ing facts on how the brain works, debunk com­mons myths about cog­ni­tion and brain health, and link to resources such as books and doc­u­men­taries. If you want to read these arti­cles as we pub­lish them via SharpBrains.com, you can fol­low us in Face­book and Twit­ter. Tell your friends and col­leagues about the series!

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Walk­ing increases Brain Vol­ume: A recent neuro-imaging study shows that walk­ing reg­u­larly can increase brain vol­ume and reduce the risks of devel­op­ing cog­ni­tive impairment.

Move to another Coun­try, to another Occu­pa­tion: A cou­ple recent stud­ies rein­force the Cog­ni­tive Reserve frame­work that sug­gests we can pro­tect our brains by speak­ing more than one lan­guage and by not retir­ing early.

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Take that Nap - It May Boost Your Learn­ing Capac­ity: Scott Barry Kauf­man tells us why sleep is good for the brain. It turns out that sleep is tied to a bet­ter immune sys­tem, meta­bolic con­trol, mem­ory, learn­ing, cre­ativ­ity and emo­tional func­tion­ing.

Boost your Atten­tion with Med­i­ta­tion: Another way to slow down is to med­i­tate. Through sum­maries of stud­ies and an inter­view with Dr. New­berg, we dis­cuss how med­i­ta­tion can improve your con­cen­tra­tion skills.

Train your Brain to Focus on Pos­i­tive Expe­ri­ences: In this arti­cle by the Greater Good Mag­a­zine, Rick Han­son explains the “neg­a­tiv­ity bias” of the brain and what steps we can take to rewire our brains for last­ing happiness.

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Today is World Alzheimer’s Day. To raise aware­ness and funds, asso­ci­a­tions world­wide orga­nize mul­ti­ple activ­i­ties includ­ing impor­tant Mem­ory Walks, and a new report helps quan­tify the grow­ing per­sonal and eco­nomic bur­den of the disease.

Among the report findings:

• Close to 36 mil­lion peo­ple world­wide have demen­tia today
• Demen­tia care costs around 1 per­cent of the world’s gross domes­tic prod­uct (GDP), or 604 bil­lion US dol­lars. Of these, 252 bil­lion rep­re­sent indi­rect costs of care, while annual direct med­ical costs account for 96 bil­lion, and direct non-medical costs for 256 billion
• By 2030, world­wide soci­etal costs will increase by over 85 percent

The good news?

• That the num­ber 1 rea­son for the bad news is sim­ple: we live longer than ever before
• That, while there is noth­ing we can do today to pre­vent Alzheimer’s pathol­ogy, there is much we can do, as indi­vid­u­als and as a soci­ety, to build up Cog­ni­tive Reserve and sig­nif­i­cantly delay cog­ni­tive decline and Alzheimer’s symptoms

Which is why there is so much ongo­ing inno­va­tion to develop tools to effi­ciently mea­sure and enhance cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing and reserve and to fos­ter active aging.

Time per­haps for a World Cog­ni­tive Reserve’s Day?