Very inter­est­ing new data rein­forc­ing two main themes we have been ana­lyz­ing for a while:
1) We bet­ter start pay­ing seri­ous atten­tion (and R&D dol­lars) to lifestyle-based and non-invasive cog­ni­tive and emo­tional health inter­ven­tions, which are mostly ignored in favor of inva­sive, drug-based options
2) Inter­ven­tions will need to be per­son­al­ized. The study below ana­lyzes data at the coun­try level, but the same logic applies to the indi­vid­ual level

Many fear Alzheimer’s, want to be tested: sur­vey (Reuters):

- “The tele­phone sur­vey of 2,678 adults aged 18 and older in the United States, France, Ger­many, Spain and Poland was con­ducted by researchers at the Har­vard School of Pub­lic Health and Read the rest of this entry »

We’re delighted to add Brain Resource to the ros­ter of Spon­sors of the upcom­ing 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit, and the Cen­ter for  Tech­nol­ogy and Aging and the Brain Injury Asso­ci­a­tion of Canada to the ros­ter of Part­ners. Thank you for your sup­port! Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

Sev­eral recent arti­cles and news:

Brain Gain: the under­ground world of “neu­roen­hanc­ing” drugs (The New Yorker)

- “Alex remains enthu­si­as­tic about Adder­all, but he also has a slightly jaun­diced cri­tique of it. “It only works as a cog­ni­tive enhancer inso­far as you are ded­i­cated to accom­plish­ing the task at hand,” he said. “The num­ber of times I’ve taken Adder­all late at night and decided that, rather than start­ing my paper, hey, I’ll orga­nize my entire music library! I’ve seen peo­ple obses­sively clean­ing their rooms on it.” Alex thought that gen­er­ally the drug helped him to bear down on his work, but it also tended to pro­duce writ­ing with a char­ac­ter­is­tic flaw. “Often, I’ve looked back at papers I’ve writ­ten on Adder­all, and they’re ver­bose. They’re bela­bor­ing a point, try­ing to cre­ate this air­tight argu­ment, when if you just got to your point in a more direct man­ner it would be stronger. But with Adder­all I’d pro­duce two pages on some­thing that could be said in a cou­ple of sen­tences.” Nev­er­the­less, his Adderall-assisted papers usu­ally earned him at least a B. They got the job done. As Alex put it, “Pro­duc­tiv­ity is a good thing.”

Eschew Enhance­ment: Memory-boosting drugs should not be made avail­able to the gen­eral pub­lic (Tech­nol­ogy Review)

- “Who might use them? Stu­dents will be tempted, as might play­ers of any game involv­ing count­ing or remem­ber­ing (chess, bridge, and even poker and black­jack). Cer­tain pro­fes­sion­als might desire a boost in atten­tion or memory”

- “But these poten­tially pow­er­ful med­i­cines should not be made avail­able to every­one, for two rea­sons. The first is safety. The last sev­eral years have pro­vided many exam­ples of side effects, some life-threatening…The sec­ond rea­son is that we still know rel­a­tively lit­tle about learn­ing and mem­ory and how they are inte­grated to make judg­ments and decisions.”

Kel­logg Set­tles with FTC over Health Claims on Cereal (Promo Magazine)

- “The FTC said that Kel­logg pro­moted the cereal as “clin­i­cally shown to improve kids’ atten­tive­ness by nearly 20%,” when in fact the study referred to in the ads showed dif­fer­ent results.”

- “The study found that only about half the chil­dren who ate Frosted Mini-Wheats for break­fast showed any improve­ment in atten­tive­ness, and only about one in nine improved by 20% or more, the FTC said.”

Brain shock: The new Gulf War syn­drome (New Scientist)

- “The US army also screens for symp­toms of mTBI when sol­diers return from a tour of duty, and again three months later. The army is also car­ry­ing out neu­rocog­ni­tive tests on recruits before they are sent into com­bat so that doc­tors can check for dete­ri­o­ra­tion in later tests.”

- “When it comes to com­bat trauma, unpick­ing the phys­i­cal from the psy­cho­log­i­cal is bound to be highly com­plex. As Barth says, per­haps the great­est dan­ger could be in try­ing to sim­plify the pic­ture too much. “I rec­om­mend that we get com­fort­able with the com­plex­ity,” he says, “and treat it as a challenge.”

Let me sum­ma­rize ten high­lights and reflec­tions from stim­u­lat­ing dis­cus­sions on cog­ni­tive health and assess­ments I have had this month so far.

Jan­u­ary 8-9th: Sym­po­sium on Co-Adaptive Learn­ing: Adap­tive Tech­nol­ogy for the Aging (details Here), orga­nized by the Ari­zona State University’s Cen­ter for Adap­tive Neural Systems:

1. Cog­ni­tive health is a crit­i­cal fac­tor in over­all health­care, but is often approached in a frag­mented, non-systematic way. Most speak­ers in the sym­po­sium did men­tion how cog­ni­tive health issues inter­act with their spe­cific areas of focus (aging, Parkinson’s Dis­ease, trau­matic brain injury, Alzheimer’s…) but there was a lack of a com­mon frame­work and tax­on­omy to define the prob­lem and iden­tify solu­tions and inter­ven­tions to mea­sure and help main­tain cog­ni­tive health across the lifespan.

2. For exam­ple, Parkinson’s Dis­ease. Did you know (I didn’t) that a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of Parkinson’s patients have well-identified cog­ni­tive impair­ments, mostly in their exec­u­tive func­tions but also per­cep­tual problems?

3. We truly need a Cul­ture of Cog­ni­tive Health, as Ran­dal Koene pointed out.

4. May online cog­ni­tive games serve as ongo­ing, real-time assess­ment of cog­ni­tive func­tion? Misha Pavel thought so. He also added we may well see “cog­ni­tive exer­cise coaches” some­time in the horizon.

5. Skip Rizzo pre­sented how vir­tual real­ity can help address Post Trau­matic Stress Dis­or­der (PTSD) and even to admin­is­ter inno­v­a­tive cog­ni­tive assessments.

6. My pre­sen­ta­tion, titled The Emerg­ing Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness Mar­ket: Sta­tus, Trends and Chal­lenges, is avail­able Here

7. Jan­u­ary 22nd: Con­sumer Reports orga­nized a health sum­mit titled Read the rest of this entry »

“If Dr. Rob can inter­view Santa, why can’t I inter­view a select group of health & med­ical blog­gers? They will have some good ideas to share”.

So did President-elect Obama came to real­ize a few days ago. After his peo­ple kindly con­tacted our peo­ple, we felt com­pelled to grant him open access to our col­lec­tive wis­dom. With­out fur­ther ado, below you have Grand Rounds 5:12 — a Q&A ses­sion led by the incom­ing Pres­i­dent on how to reform (for the bet­ter, we hope) healthcare.

On Health Insurance

Q:  How does the blo­gos­phere per­ceive the prob­lem of hav­ing a sig­nif­i­cant group of peo­ple uninsured?

Health Insur­ance Col­orado: a grow­ing eco­nomic bur­den, which may lead to emer­gency rooms turn­ing peo­ple away if they are unable to pro­vide proof of health insurance.

Dr Rich: well, a recent arti­cle in the Jour­nal of the Amer­i­can Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion showed how over­crowd­ing in Amer­i­can emer­gency rooms is NOT due to the unin­sured. Rather, it is due to insured Amer­i­cans who can­not get in to see their pri­mary care physi­cians. We may need improved care both for the insured and unin­sured groups.

Insure­Blog: I’d sec­ond that. Lack of health insur­ance is a major prob­lem but is it really our Biggest Problem?

It’s All about Attitude

Q: You may have heard my cam­paign mantra, “Yes We Can”. Can I count on your support?

ButY­ouDont­Look­Sick: Yes. If Leslie Hunt can talk so openly about her chronic ill­ness (Lupus) yet ful­fill her Amer­i­can Idol dreams, we can ful­fill our dreams too.

Notes of an Anes­the­sioboist: you are talk­ing to the group of pro­fes­sion­als will­ing to self-experiment with our own body for the ben­e­fit of sci­ence and our patients.

Med­views: My wife, son, and I signed up to work as med­ical vol­un­teers for your upcom­ing inauguration.

Emergi­Blog: I am on board too. But, please, remem­ber that car­ing is the essence of nurs­ing. And that is why my patients will always be my patients and never my  clients.

Neu­roan­thro­pol­ogy: Mr. President-elect, it seems to me that, despite all our good inten­tions, bal­anc­ing the bud­get and mul­ti­ple com­pet­ing pri­or­i­ties will be a chal­lenge. May I sug­gest you start prac­tic­ing some capoeira for equi­lib­rium training?

Shrink Rap: Happy to help. Now, we will need to pro­tect some time for qual­ity sleep time.

Train­ing

Q: I am encour­aged by your words. How can my team and I bet­ter sup­port you in your daily activities?

Aequa­nim­i­tas: we need more role mod­els for us to “learn to think, observe, and com­pare” and that the patient is our “first, last, and only teacher”.

Mud­phud­der: Couldn’t agree more. We need 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 »

Our fel­low blog­ger Jeremy over at Psy­Blog has writ­ten a thought­ful post com­par­ing the value of a num­ber of cog­ni­tive enhanc­ing tools. His over­all verdict?

“The evi­dence for exer­cise boost­ing cog­ni­tive func­tion is head-and-shoulders above that for brain train­ing, drugs, nutri­tional sup­ple­ments and med­i­ta­tion. Sci­en­tif­i­cally, on the cur­rent evi­dence, exer­cise is the best way to enhance your cog­ni­tive func­tion. And as for its side-effects: yes there is the chance of an injury but exer­cise can also reduce weight, lower the chance of demen­tia, improve mood and lead to a longer life-span. Damn those side-effects!”

Arti­cle: Which Cog­ni­tive Enhancers Really Work: Brain Train­ing, Drugs, Vit­a­mins, Med­i­ta­tion or Exercise?

Jeremy, I started writ­ing this as a com­ment to your post in your blog, but then it got too long. Let me write my reac­tion to your post here.

While I appre­ci­ate your analy­sis and share most of your points, I think the “rank­ing” effort (this type of inter­ven­tion is bet­ter than that one) is ulti­mately mis­lead­ing.  It is based on a faulty search for a gen­eral solution/ magic pill for every­one and everything.

If only things were so sim­ple. Per­haps one day there will be research to sup­port that view, but cer­tainly not today. A num­ber of inter­ven­tions have shown their value. In dif­fer­ent pop­u­la­tions, and con­texts. For “exer­cise is the best way to enhance your cog­ni­tive func­tion” to be true, one needs to have a pretty spe­cific under­stand­ing of “best”, “your” and “cog­ni­tive function”.

Read the rest of this entry »

A quick note to alert you of two very inter­est­ing, grow­ing, and some­how linked debates:

1) Very insight­ful arti­cle on The Aging of the Baby Boomers: What Does It Mean for the Legal Pro­fes­sion (thank you, Stephanie!). Some quotes:

- “As I pen this arti­cle, it seems as though I’m writ­ing about some­one else the older worker. Age and aging, it seems, are in the eye of the one look­ing back at you in the mir­ror. I have this the­ory, espe­cially as it per­tains to men, that when we look in the mir­ror, we still see that 20 year-old stud who can leap tall build­ings. But I know that my ver­ti­cal leap is not what it used to be. The real­ity of aging in the legal pro­fes­sion is upon me and those of our generation.”

- “Also, the per­cep­tion of how old is old varies depend­ing on the job or pro­fes­sion. For exam­ple, Read the rest of this entry »

No mat­ter what we are read­ing or doing, there is always the need to take a lit­tle break and chal­lenge our minds (and to learn a bit about how our brains work). Here you have a selec­tion of the 10 Brain Teasers that peo­ple have enjoyed most in this site.

1. Do you think you know the col­ors?: the Stroop Test

2. Can you count?: Bas­ket­ball atten­tion experiment

3. Plan­ning is not that easy: Tow­ers of Hanoi

4. Inter­ac­tive visual illu­sion: the Muller-Lyer Illusion

5. Who is this?: A very impor­tant lit­tle guy

5. How many…: Train your Frontal and Pari­etal lobes

6. What’s the miss­ing num­ber: Pat­tern Recog­ni­tion Brain Teaser

7. Who’s the eldest?: Rea­son­ing Skills Brain Teaser

8. Brain Puz­zle for the Whole Brain: The Blind Beggar

9. Is a cir­cle a cir­cle?: Visual Per­cep­tion Brain Teaser

10. How is this pos­si­ble?
Read the rest of this entry »