Recently there has been an ongo­ing debate as to whether attempt­ing cross­words reg­u­larly can stave off cog­ni­tive decline, which is the hall­mark of healthy aging and demen­tia. As with many areas of psy­chol­ogy the answer to this ques­tion may not be as clear-cut as one would hope. Before con­sid­er­ing the evi­dence for whether cross­word par­tic­i­pa­tion can reduce cog­ni­tive decline in later life, it is nec­es­sary to con­sider the dif­fer­ent types of cross­words avail­able and under­stand whether one or another type may be more cog­ni­tively stim­u­lat­ing than the other. Gen­er­ally, when we think of cross­words two kinds spring to mind, either gen­eral knowl­edge or cryp­tic crosswords.

A gen­eral knowl­edge cross­word typ­i­cally has clues which are sim­i­lar to answer­ing gen­eral knowl­edge quizzes, but the solver has the ben­e­fit of know­ing how many let­ters make up the solution.

For exam­ple: “the cap­i­tal of Peru (4)”… Read the rest of this entry »

When I give a pre­sen­ta­tion about brain health and fit­ness, there are always a few peo­ple who come tell me after­ward that they do cross­word puz­zles every­day. They heard that men­tal exer­cise is good for the brain so they are pleased and proud to report that they do the best they can to main­tain their brain func­tions. But are they really? What if I was a gym instruc­tor? Would the same peo­ple tell me proudly that to keep their whole body in shape they do biceps move­ments every­day, and that’s all they do? I DO feel like I was this gym instruc­tor when I hear the cross­word puz­zles claim! Solv­ing cross­word puz­zles repet­i­tively is not the best habit for two rea­sons. Read the rest of this entry »

There are whole mar­kets (think cross­words, herbal sup­ple­ments, drugs, brain fit­ness soft­ware) aimed at help­ing us improve our memory.

Now, what is “mem­ory”? how does the process of mem­ory work?

Dr. Bill Klemm, Pro­fes­sor of Neu­ro­science at Texas A&M Uni­ver­sity, explains a very impor­tant con­cept below.

- Alvaro

——-

Get­ting from Here to There:
Mak­ing Mem­ory Con­sol­i­da­tion Work

By Bill Klemm,  Ph. D.

Until con­sol­i­da­tion has occurred, a short-term mem­ory is very vul­ner­a­ble, as all of us have expe­ri­enced from look­ing up a phone num­ber only to have some dis­trac­tion cause us to lose the num­ber before we can get it dialed.

What is “consolidation”?

Brain researchers use the term “con­sol­i­da­tion” for the process whereby short-term mem­ory gets made more permanent.

Here, I would like to dis­cuss some aspects of con­sol­i­da­tion that many peo­ple may not know about: why sleep is so impor­tant, why mem­ory must be prac­ticed, and how test­ing pro­motes con­sol­i­da­tion. Read the rest of this entry »

Today I had a great con­ver­sa­tion with Mar­tin Buschkuehl, one of the U Michi­gan researchers involved in the cog­ni­tive train­ing study that has received much media atten­tion since early last week, when the study was pub­lished at the Pro­ceed­ings of the National Acad­emy of Sci­ences.

I will pub­lish the inter­view notes next week. For the moment, let me para­phrase his answer to the ques­tion: “Why are com­put­er­ized pro­grams like the one you used fun­da­men­tally dif­fer­ent from, say, sim­ply doing many cross­word puzzles?”.

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 »