Below you can find the full tran­script of our engag­ing Q&A ses­sion yes­ter­day on holis­tic brain health with clin­i­cal neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist Dr. Paul Nuss­baum, author of Save Your Brain. You can learn more about the full Brain Fit­ness Q&A Series Here.

Per­haps one of the best exchanges was: Read the rest of this entry »

Who will Ben­e­fit From Train­ing?  New research shows that mea­sur­ing brain activ­ity pat­terns can pre­dict who may ben­e­fit most from tran­ing inter­ven­tions –and who may not. Please note that the Kramer lab involved in this research is now offer­ing a post­doc­toral fellowship.

A Quick Test to Detect Ath­letes’ Con­cus­sions:  This new test can be per­formed at the side­line of sport­ing events to help detect con­cus­sions by look­ing at dif­fer­ent types of eye movements.

The Best Way to Learn: Tak­ing a test in which you recall what you have read seems to be a much bet­ter strat­egy than either study­ing the mate­r­ial repeat­edly or draw­ing detailed dia­grams of what you are learning.

Inter­ven­tions

Brain Train­ing Games for Seniors: Donal O’Brien, from Queens Uni­ver­sity at Belfast, tells us about what moti­vates seniors to use a brain train­ing app.

Vit­a­min D and Cog­ni­tive Decline: This study sup­ports that patients with vit­a­min D defi­ciency show an increased risk of cog­ni­tive decline.

Baby Sleeps and Brain Devel­op­ment: How much sleep a 12 month old baby gets can influ­ence the devel­op­ment of his/her exec­u­tive functions.

PTSD: Can we Dis­rupt the Recon­sol­i­da­tion of Trau­matic Mem­o­ries? A dis­cus­sion of the dif­fer­ent tech­niques used/ under research that can help PTSD patients.

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Books and Sum­mit Updates

Visual Illu­sions in Art and Sci­ence: These sur­pris­ing clas­sic illu­sions illus­trate how art and magic can help sci­ence in under­tans­ing how we per­ceive the world around us.

2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit Agenda: You can now view the lat­est Agenda for the whole Sum­mit and a 3-minute clip to learn how the Sharp­Brains Vir­tual Sum­mit: Retool­ing Brain Health for the 21st Cen­tury (March 30th — April 1st) will work.

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Brain Teaser

Let us first announce an upcom­ing Vir­tual Book Club Dis­cus­sion focused on Brain Fit­ness, to take place on Mon­day March 14th in honor of Brain Aware­ness Week 2011 (March 14-20th). Let’s dis­cuss burn­ing issues together: Why care about neu­ro­plas­tic­ity and the pos­si­bil­i­ties it offers to enrich our qual­ity of life? What does cog­ni­tive reserve research mean to the way we learn, work, play, live? What is Brain Train­ing — and what is not? All the con­ver­sa­tion be vir­tual, via social media tools. You can learn more here.

This edi­tion of Sharp­Brains monthly eNewslet­ter brings many arti­cles on those top­ics. Enjoy! Read the rest of this entry »

Here are four stud­ies and arti­cles, pub­lished in Jan­u­ary, that report very inter­est­ing find­ings and offer inspir­ing ideas:

• An arti­cle on the role of neu­ro­plas­tic­ity in Rep. Gabrielle Gif­fords’ recovery.
• A new study that used a blood test able to detect beta amy­loid 42 (the pro­tein frag­ment that makes up Alzheimer’s plaque) and sug­gested that the asso­ci­a­tion between amy­loid and cog­ni­tive decline could be mod­i­fied by cog­ni­tive reserve.
• An arti­cle on a new brain scan tech­nol­ogy to detect Alzheimer’s pathol­ogy in the brain.
• An arti­cle report­ing the answer of Don Tap­scott to the ques­tion “What sci­en­tific con­cept would improve everybody’s cog­ni­tive toolkit?” Read the rest of this entry »

Every­one these days is talk­ing about edu­ca­tion and test­ing reform, but why is rel­e­vant brain research often ignored? Which organ if not the brain does the learn­ing and teach­ing part? Renowned edu­ca­tor and brain expert Dr. Robert Syl­wester shares his rec­om­mended Top Brain Books for Edu­ca­tors and Learn­ers to help inform the con­ver­sa­tion. A must read!

Save the Date: the 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit, the sec­ond edi­tion of our annual indus­try and research con­fer­ence, will take place vir­tu­ally from March 28th to March 31st 2010. Details will fol­low soon.

With­out fur­ther ado…please enjoy the Novem­ber edi­tion of our monthly eNewslet­ter:

Research Bites

Foot­ball and brain dam­age: In high-contact sports such as foot­ball, even hits not lead­ing to con­cus­sions can affect the brain.

How to take omega-3: Eat­ing fish (source of omega-3) reduces risks of demen­tia but DHA sup­ple­ments have no effect on Alzheimer’s symptoms.

Vit­a­mins against Alzheimer’s? A good review shows that Vit­a­min B has unclear effects on mem­ory and cog­ni­tive decline.

Brain train­ing helps older dri­vers: tar­geted cog­ni­tive train­ing can help reduce older dri­vers’ car crashes. Dr. Mich­e­lon explains why and how.

Resources and Tips

Top 10 Q&A about Child’s Brain Devel­op­ment: In the 1st part of our series, The Brain across the Lifes­pan, we answer 10 ques­tions to help you under­stand the devel­op­ing brain.

Our Brain on Music: Scott Kauf­man shows that there is lit­tle evi­dence that lis­ten­ing to Mozart’s music boosts brain func­tions. Music can have an effect, but we need to do more than listen.

Work­ing Mem­ory: What is work­ing mem­ory? Why do we care? How can we best enhance it? Dr. Mich­e­lon answers these ques­tions through con­crete exam­ples and a Q&A.

Books

Rethink­ing Alzheimer’s Pre­ven­tion and Treat­ment: In this excerpt from their recent book “The Alzheimer’s Solu­tion” Ken Kosik and Linda Clegg pro­pose a new model for brain care: The “cog­ni­tive shop”.

Did You See the Gorilla? Daniel Simons, co-author of  “The Invis­i­ble Gorilla”, inter­viewed by David DiS­alvo, tells us about the myth of multi-tasking.

Cog­ni­tive Devel­op­ment in the first 20 years: In this excerpt from his lat­est book “A Child’s Brain”, Dr. Syl­wester syn­the­sizes the first 20 years of development.

Coun­cil Insights

How will we assess, enhance and repair cog­ni­tion across the lifes­pan?: Learn about a brain health rev­o­lu­tion in the mak­ing and how we can shape it, straight from the new Sharp­Brains Coun­cil for Brain Fit­ness Innovation.

Brain Teasers

Brain Games for each Cog­ni­tive Abil­ity: To under­stand why we need to go beyond cross­word puz­zles, stim­u­late your whole brain with this selec­tion of brain teasers and games.

Have a great Decem­ber, and please don’t for­get to engage via Face­book and Twit­ter!

An inter­est­ing and very well-documented arti­cle in the Los Ange­les Times reviews stud­ies look­ing at Vit­a­min B and its role in improv­ing mem­ory.

The vit­a­mins — includ­ing folic acid and vit­a­mins B6 and B12 — are often touted as a way to improve mem­ory and stave off cog­ni­tive decline. The claims are based on the find­ing that lev­els of the vit­a­min are low in peo­ple with var­i­ous forms of cog­ni­tive impair­ment Read the rest of this entry »

Let me pro­vide an overview of the great things going on with the Sharp­Brains Coun­cil for Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion — start­ing this week, we will share a brief update like this every Fri­day to main­tain Sharp­Brains col­leagues and read­ers informed. Please note that all links below require access to the Council’s online platform.

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?

(Editor’s Note: you may have read all the con­fus­ing –if not out­right mis­lead­ing– recent media cov­er­age on the effect of men­tal stim­u­la­tion on cog­ni­tive health and Alzheimer’s Dis­ease. To help clar­ify mat­ters, please find below part of the ongo­ing dis­cus­sion at Sharp­Brains’ group in LinkedIn, and keep tuned since in a few days we’ll be pub­lish­ing an analy­sis of the sci­en­tific study that, while bring­ing largely Good News, has been largely reported as Ter­ri­ble News.)

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Stu­art • I just came across this arti­cle in Med­ical News…Mental Stim­u­la­tion Delays The Decline In Think­ing Skills, But May Accel­er­ate Demen­tia Later On.…
It’s the first time I have seen an arti­cle talk­ing about the poten­tial down side of men­tal stim­u­la­tion in later life…I would be inter­ested in the views of the more qual­i­fied than myself in this area…http://tinyurl.com/22ovdfv

Jenny • I wouldn’t say I was more qual­i­fied. How­ever hav­ing read this arti­cle although ini­tially it would seem a dis­ap­point­ment that hav­ing done all that men­tally stim­u­lat­ing activ­ity to build one’s cog­ni­tive reserve to then be sub­ject to a rapid down­hill decline. But in fact I think the study is good news. Firstly it sup­ports the notion that by being engaged in men­tally stim­u­lat­ing activ­i­ties we can main­tain our cog­ni­tion as we age. Sec­ondly we may be on the way to devel­op­ing demen­tia but isn’t it bet­ter to delay or defer the onset fro as long as pos­si­ble? It may be by the time the symp­toms man­i­fest them­selves we have mean­while being enjoy­ing con­tin­u­ing to live normally.

In the Nun study the autop­sies of some of the nuns brains showed they were full of Alzheimer’s dis­ease yet clin­i­cally had shown no out­ward sign. I believe this study is very impor­tant in rein­forc­ing the mes­sage that we all ben­e­fit from keep­ing men­tally fit.

The other key point is that by defer­ring the onset of symp­toms the eco­nomic and social sav­ings to the health sys­tem and soci­ety will be huge.

And lastly. If I had the choice between liv­ing for longer symp­tom free of demen­tia and then going into a rapid decline I think I would choose that any day over the pos­si­bil­ity of devel­op­ing symp­toms ear­lier and liv­ing longer with the disease.

So I don’t see this arti­cle as hav­ing a down side. Being men­tally engaged and hav­ing a big­ger cog­ni­tive reserve, does not con­fer immu­nity against demen­tia and I don’t believe has ever pur­ported to do so. Maybe that has just been Read the rest of this entry »

What is work­ing mem­ory, and why it mat­ters? Can we multi-task as good as we seem to assume? What should we all know about how our brains work, and why?

We hope you enjoy this August eNewslet­ter, fea­tur­ing six dis­tin­guished con­trib­u­tors who answer those ques­tions, and more. Please remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this free Brain Fit­ness eNewslet­ter by email, using the box in the right column.

Know Thy­self

Why work­ing mem­ory mat­ters in the knowl­edge age: As Dr. Tracy Alloway points out, one way to visu­al­ize work­ing mem­ory is as the brain’s “Post-it Notes” — we make men­tal scrib­bles of bits of infor­ma­tion we need to remem­ber and work with. With­out enough work­ing mem­ory we can­not func­tion as a soci­ety or as indi­vid­u­als. Learn more by par­tic­i­pat­ing in this study launched by Dr. Alloway’s team in con­junc­tion with the British Sci­ence Festival.

What should every­one learn about the brain?: Dr. Jo Ellen Rose­man and Mary Kop­pel from the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion for the Advance­ment of Sci­ence (AAAS) dis­cuss recent rec­om­men­da­tions on what all stu­dents should know. Not just the basics of brain struc­ture and func­tion, but also a good under­stand­ing of men­tal health—such as the mind/body rela­tion­ship, fac­tors that shape behav­ior, ways of cop­ing with men­tal dis­tress, and the diag­no­sis and treat­ment of men­tal disorders.

News

Pool­ing data to accel­er­ate Alzheimer’s research: A good arti­cle in the New York Times presents the rea­sons behind grow­ing research of how to detect Alzheimer’s Dis­ease. A pilot study shows how com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive train­ing may help reduce falls among elderly. Amazon.com rec­om­mends The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness in a thought-provoking mix.

Beyond News

Needed: fund­ing for inno­v­a­tive research on slow­ing cog­ni­tive decline via cog­ni­tive train­ing: Sharp­Brains reader and UK researcher Nick Almond shares a note debunk­ing the so-called BBC brain train­ing exper­i­ment  and out­lin­ing the type of research he and col­leagues at Leeds Uni­ver­sity deem necessary.

Long-term effects of neu­ro­feed­back treat­ment for ADHD: Dr. David Rabiner reviews the 6-month follow-up of a sci­en­tific study on whether neu­ro­feed­back can help kids with atten­tion deficits, find­ing that ben­e­fits indeed remained 6 months after treat­ment had ended. Given, how­ever, that only around 50% of chil­dren showed ben­e­fits, it is impor­tant to regard this tool as part of a mul­ti­modal treat­ment program.

Brain Teaser

Test your atten­tional focus and multi-tasking: How often do you read a doc­u­ment while talk­ing on the phone with a client? Or think about your prob­lems at work while help­ing your child with his home­work? Human atten­tion is lim­ited, and we need to man­age it well, as shown in this teaser pre­pared by Dr. Pas­cale Mich­e­lon.

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Have a great Sep­tem­ber. And, should you hap­pen to be in Barcelona, Spain, on Sep­tem­ber 14th, make sure to attend Alvaro Fer­nan­dez talk there titled “How and Why Dig­i­tal Tech­nol­ogy Will Trans­form Edu­ca­tion, Train­ing and Brain Health”.