(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”.

I was really inter­ested in the recent cri­tique of the BBC brain train­ing exper­i­ment by Dr. Eliz­a­beth Zelin­ski. I think Owens et al (2010) was a crit­i­cal piece of research which was not con­ducted in the right way and was focus­ing on the wrong sam­ple pop­u­la­tion.  I totally agree with the com­ments by Dr. Zelin­ski regard­ing the poten­tial for sam­ple bias and the use of some ques­tion­able cog­ni­tive mea­sures. How­ever, I would like to take this cri­tique fur­ther and ques­tion whether the study was value for money when there are other stud­ies which can­not achieve fund­ing but would, in my opin­ion, show the criticism/scepticism of the use-it-or-lose-it theory.

I think there is not enough crit­i­cism about the age of the sam­ple pop­u­la­tion used in Owens et al. (2010). We have con­clu­sive cog­ni­tive and neu­ro­log­i­cal evi­dence that cognitive/neurological plas­tic­ity exists in young adults. There is also ade­quate evi­dence that neu­ro­plas­tic­ity is evi­dent in older adults. The crit­i­cal point which I want to make about the sam­ple pop­u­la­tion in Owens et al. study is that it did not tar­get the cor­rect sam­ple pop­u­la­tion, that is, older adults who are at risk of cognitive/neuronal atro­phy. It does not mat­ter if younger adults improve on brain train­ing tasks, or if skills picked up by younger adults from brain train­ing are not trans­ferred to other cog­ni­tive domains, sim­ply because younger adults are good at these skills/cognitive func­tions. There­fore there is a pos­si­bil­ity that ceil­ing or scal­ing effects mask the true find­ings in Owens et al. (2010), as indi­cated by Zelinski.

The recruit­ment of the sam­ple pop­u­la­tion is also very con­cern­ing and I do not feel that their con­trol group was appro­pri­ate. Read the rest of this entry »

Here you have the July edi­tion of our monthly eNewslet ter cov­er­ing cog­ni­tive health and brain fit­ness top­ics. Please remem ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this free Brain Fit­ness eNewslet­ter by email, using the box in the right column.

Tech­nol­ogy to upgrade brain care: In this exten­sive inter­view, Dr. John Docherty helps con­nect the dots on why new frame­works and tools are a must to put recent brain research to good use. A must read for all pro­fes­sion­als in the field.

Research

Find­ings from NIH Expert Panel: The Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging asked Alvaro Fer­nan­dez to com­ment on the find­ings from a major cog­ni­tive health research review by the National Insti­tutes of Health. Lifestyle still mat­ters, and pro­tec­tive fac­tors against cog­ni­tive decline are led by cog­ni­tive train­ing, phys­i­cal activ­ity and cog­ni­tive engagement.

Sci­en­tific cri­tique of BBC brain train­ing exper­i­ment: Dr. Eliz­a­beth Zelin­ski shares her con­cerns about the April 2010 BBC study, which included sub­stan­tial and unex­plained dropout rates, and ques­tion­able out­come mea­sure­ment and interpretation.

The value of being bilin­gual and build­ing a Cog­ni­tive Reserve to pre­serve learn­ing and mem­ory even in the face of brain dam­age are explored in recent studies.

San Fran­cisco Bay Area study seeks par­tic­i­pants: The Gaz­za­ley Lab at UCSF is look­ing for par­tic­i­pants aged 20–59 to explore the impact of dis­trac­tion and mul­ti­task­ing on per­for­mance across the lifespan.

Inno­va­tion

What impressed Inno­va­tion Awards Judg­ing Panel: Get some insight into what most impressed the Judg­ing Panel about each Win­ner and Final­ist of the 2010 Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion Awards.

New — Sharp­Brains’ 2010 Mar­ket Report:  Sharp­Brains’ flag­ship, 207-page, third annual mar­ket report finds con­tin­ued growth for dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies to assess, enhance and treat cognition.

To man­age brain fit­ness through life, we need to put puz­zle pieces together: inno­v­a­tive tools to help us bet­ter mon­i­tor our cog­ni­tive health and take informed action are badly needed.…and already emerging.

The inter­net will fry your brain. Sure: In his lat­est book, Nicholas Carr does a great job high­light­ing the impli­ca­tions of life­long neuro­plasticity, but picks the wrong enemy.

“Seri­ous Games”:  Can video games inspire peo­ple to per­form acts of altru­ism? Kyle Smith reports.

Teasers

Yahoo Opti­cal Illu­sions and teasers: Yahoo! has cre­ated an expanded sec­tion of illu­sions and teasers, and we were glad to con­tribute to it. Enjoy…and have a great summer!

In late April 2010, an inde­pen­dent expert panel orga­nized by the NIH released a thought­ful report on the state of the sci­ence for pre­ven­tion of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease and cog­ni­tive decline*. The report sum­ma­rizes the panel’s review of the sci­en­tific lit­er­a­ture by saying:

“Firm con­clu­sions can­not be drawn about the asso­ci­a­tion of mod­i­fi­able risk fac­tors with cog­ni­tive decline or Alzheimer’s disease.”

Which was basi­cally reported as “noth­ing can pre­vent Alzheimer’s Disease.”

Which is very true. And also very dif­fer­ent from what most read­ers may assume it means.

Note: You can keep read­ing the arti­cle What the recent NIH Expert Panel on Alzheimer’s Pre­ven­tion Means – and Doesn’t Mean in the web­site of the Amer­i­can Soci­ety of Aging (arti­cle link opens PDF). ASA recently asked me to write a cou­ple of arti­cles on lat­est brain fit­ness and cog­ni­tive health trends for their Min­dAlert ini­tia­tive, and this is the first of two.

This is a par­tial list of the lit­er­a­ture we reviewed dur­ing the research phase of our new book, The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness.  We know many friends of Sharp­Brains are researchers, health­care pro­fes­sion­als, graduate/ Ph.D. stu­dents, who want have direct access to the ref­er­ences (per­haps PubMed should pro­mote itself as a never end­ing source of men­tal stim­u­la­tion?), so here you have this list, orga­nized by rel­e­vant chap­ter. Please note that the list below appears in the book — whose man­u­script we had to close in Jan­u­ary 2009.

Intro­duc­tion

Basak, C. et al. (2008). Can train­ing in a real-time strat­egy video game atten­u­ate cog­ni­tive decline in older adults? Psy­chol­ogy and Aging.
Beg­ley, S. (2007). Train your mind, change your brain: How a new sci­ence reveals our extra­or­di­nary poten­tial to trans­form our­selves. Bal­lan­tine Books.
DeKosky, S. T., et al. (2008). Ginkgo biloba for pre­ven­tion of demen­tia: a ran­dom­ized con­trolled trial. Jour­nal of the Amer­i­can Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion, 300, 2253–2262.
Doidge, N. (2007). The Brain that changes itself: Sto­ries of per­sonal tri­umph from the fron­tiers of brain sci­ence. Viking Adult.

Chap­ter 1. The Brain and Brain Fit­ness 101

Bunge, S. A., & Wright, S. B. (2007). Neu­rode­vel­op­men­tal changes in work­ing mem­ory and cog­ni­tive con­trol. Cur­rent Opin­ion In Neu­ro­bi­ol­ogy, 17(2), 243–50.
Dama­sio, A. (1995). Descartes error: Emo­tion, rea­son, and the human brain. Pen­guin Press.
David Kolb, D. (1983). Expe­ri­en­tial learn­ing: Expe­ri­ence as the source of learn­ing and devel­op­ment. FT Press.
Dra­gan­ski, B., Gaser, C., Kem­per­mann, G., Kuhn, H. G., Win­kler, J., Buchel, C., & May A. (2006). Tem­po­ral and spa­tial dynam­ics of brain struc­ture changes dur­ing exten­sive learn­ing. The Jour­nal of Neu­ro­science, 261231, 6314–6317.
Gage, F. H., Kem­per­mann, G., & Song, H. (2007). Adult Neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis. Cold Spring Har­bor Lab­o­ra­tory Press, NY.
Gard­ner, H. (1983). Frames of Mind: The the­ory of mul­ti­ple intel­li­gences. New York: Basic Books.
Gaser, C. & Schlaug, G. (2003). Brain struc­tures dif­fer between musi­cians and non-musicians. The Jour­nal of Neu­ro­science, 23, 9240–9245. Read the rest of this entry »

Brain-fitness games join work­place, as well as senior cen­ter, arse­nals (MarketWatch)

- “Con­sumers and retire­ment homes have made brain-fitness games and exer­cises a com­mer­cial hit, but now some insur­ers and employ­ers are incor­po­rat­ing them into well­ness pro­grams that pro­mote health not just for the body but also for the mind.”

- “Improv­ing brain health can result in less pre­sen­teeism, the ten­dency to be at work but be dis­tracted and not able to focus,” he added. “If you look at dis­abil­ity costs, absen­teeism and pre­sen­teeism account for most of the med­ical costs, and that’s a good rea­son for employ­ers to be focused on brain health.” (accord­ing to Dr. Eugene Baker, vice pres­i­dent at OptumHealth’s Behav­ioral Solu­tions division)”

The arti­cle reviews inno­v­a­tive prac­tices at OptumHealth, Nation­wide Auto Insur­ance Com­pany, Humana, Penn Treaty Amer­i­can Corp, All­state, and the US Army. I am glad to see the media start to notice the impor­tance of cog­ni­tive assess­ments and the grow­ing activ­ity by insur­ers. Read the rest of this entry »

Stan­ford Issues Find­ings from Cog­ni­tive and Brain Experts Urg­ing Con­sumer Cau­tion on Mem­ory Fit­ness Prod­ucts (press release)

- “Fear of mem­ory loss, men­tal impair­ment and Alzheimer’s dis­ease lead many con­sumers to search for prod­ucts — from sup­ple­ments to soft­ware — that claim to ward off such ail­ments,” Laura L. Carstensen, found­ing direc­tor of the Stan­ford Cen­ter on Longevity, said. “Such prod­ucts are becom­ing more pro­lific, but this bur­geon­ing indus­try is com­pletely unreg­u­lated and the claims can range from rea­son­able though untested, to bla­tantly false. It is impor­tant for con­sumers to pro­ceed with cau­tion before buy­ing into many of these prod­uct claims. There is no magic bul­let solu­tion for cog­ni­tive decline.”

- The Summit’s (Note: held in April 2008) state­ment points out that “it would be wrong to con­clude that noth­ing can be done to improve men­tal fit­ness.” But goes on to “strongly encour­age research that com­pares the effi­cacy and the cost-effectiveness of dif­fer­ent approaches to main­tain­ing cog­ni­tive fitness.”

Round-up of April arti­cles and news on neu­ro­science, brain devel­op­ment and cog­ni­tive health:

Games for Health Con­fer­ences to host new Cog­ni­tive Health Track:

For the first time, a new Cog­ni­tive Health track –Pow­ered by Sharp­Brains– will cover eleven brain fit­ness and cog­ni­tive health top­ics dur­ing the 5th Annual Games for Health Con­fer­ence. The cur­rent price is $379, with a 15% dis­count if you use code “sharp09” (with­out quo­ta­tion) when you reg­is­ter Here. Details: June 11-12th at the Hyatt Har­bor­side Hotel in Boston, MA.

Bilin­gual Babies Get Head Start — Before They Can Talk:

- “Unlike the mono­lin­gual group, the bilin­gual group was able to suc­cess­fully learn a new sound type and use it to pre­dict where each char­ac­ter would pop up…The bilin­gual babies’ skill applies to more than just switch­ing between lan­guages. Mehler likened this appar­ently enhanced cog­ni­tive abil­ity to a brain select­ing “the right tool for the right operation”—also called exec­u­tive function.”

- “In this basic process, the brain, ever flex­i­ble, nim­bly switches from one learned response to another as sit­u­a­tions change…Monolingual babies hone this abil­ity later in their young lives, Mehler suggests.”

Study shows how kids’ stress hurts mem­ory:

“Now, research is pro­vid­ing what could be cru­cial clues to explain how child­hood poverty trans­lates into dim­mer chances of suc­cess: Read the rest of this entry »

Round-up of recent arti­cles on neu­ro­science, brain devel­op­ment and cog­ni­tive health:

Encephalon 68: A car­ni­val of neu­ro­science:

Chris hosts a great col­lec­tion of neu­ro­science and psy­chol­ogy posts in his sig­na­ture Q&A style.

Bilin­gual Babies Get Head Start — Before They Can Talk:

- Unlike the mono­lin­gual group, the bilin­gual group was able to suc­cess­fully learn a new sound type and use it to pre­dict where each char­ac­ter would pop up.

- The bilin­gual babies’ skill applies to more than just switch­ing between lan­guages. Mehler likened this appar­ently enhanced cog­ni­tive abil­ity to a brain select­ing “the right tool for the right oper­a­tion” also called exec­u­tive function.

- In this basic process, the brain, ever flex­i­ble, nim­bly switches from one learned response to another as sit­u­a­tions change.

- Mono­lin­gual babies hone this abil­ity later in their young lives, Mehler suggests.”

Study shows how kids’ stress hurts mem­ory:

“Now, research is pro­vid­ing what could be cru­cial clues to explain how child­hood poverty trans­lates into dim­mer chances of suc­cess: Chronic stress from grow­ing up poor appears to have a direct impact on the brain, leav­ing chil­dren with impair­ment in at least one key area — work­ing memory.”

Return­ing troops get­ting tested for brain injuries:

- “More than 150,000 ser­vice mem­bers from the Marines, Air Force, Army and Navy have under­gone the test­ing that became manda­tory last year. Those who suf­fer a con­cus­sion or sim­i­lar head injury will get a follow-up test.”

Dia­betes ‘impact on brain power’:

- “Fail­ure to con­trol type 2 dia­betes may have a long-term impact on the brain, research has suggested.

- Lead researcher Dr Jackie Price said: “Either hypos lead to cog­ni­tive decline, or cog­ni­tive decline makes it more dif­fi­cult for peo­ple to man­age their dia­betes, which in turn causes more hypos.

- “A third expla­na­tion could be that a third uniden­ti­fied fac­tor is caus­ing both the hypos and the cog­ni­tive decline.”