Well, today we have an excep­tional col­lec­tion of blog car­ni­vals to men­tion. Please only start brows­ing if you do have some time to spare…otherwise you will end up spend­ing more time read­ing the arti­cles than you really can afford to

First, some superb edi­tions of:

Grand Rounds (Med­i­cine). An amaz­ing col­lec­tion of medicine-related arti­cles, with fun guid­ance. You can also check the pre­vi­ous edi­tion of this car­ni­val, greatly pre­sented, that we had for­got­ten to men­tion (no brain is per­fect, if you mind to ask!). 

Encephalon (neu­ro­science and psychology)

Edu­ca­tion Wonks (edu­ca­tion, perhaps?)

Tan­gled Bank (gen­eral science)

A new edi­tion of Brain Fit­ness (we launched this car­ni­val in Jan­u­ary and Talia hosted this edi­tion; let us know if you want to host future ones).

And posts on a vari­ety of topics:

Brain Blog­ging,   Video Game Blog­gers,   Nurs­ing,   Eco­nom­ics and Social Pol­icy,   Entre­pre­neurs,   Fam­ily Life,   Teacher In Ser­vice,   Online Edu­ca­tion,   Per­sonal Devel­op­ment,   Online Uni­ver­sity,   ADD Blog,   Total Mind and Body Fit­ness,   Arse­nal Of Goals & Plans,   Doing it Dif­fer­ently,   Obser­va­tions on Life,   Brain Code,   Edu­ca­tion and School Issues,   Depres­sion and Men­tal health,   Spe­cial Needs,   Per­sonal Growth.

The New Yorker April 30th issue includes a superb arti­cle on The Way We Age Now: Can med­i­cine serve an aging pop­u­la­tion?. Atul Gawande pro­vides a great (and a bit depress­ing) sur­vey on the geri­atrics field: more and more need for prac­ti­tion­ers, with less and less supply.

now, a cou­ple of quotes and data points that are very rel­e­vant to our efforts around healthy brain aging.

• “for most of our hundred-thousand-year existence—all but the past cou­ple of hun­dred years—the aver­age life span of human beings has been thirty years or less. (Research sug­gests that sub­jects of the Roman Empire had an aver­age life expectancy of twenty-eight years.)”
• “Inher­i­tance has sur­pris­ingly lit­tle influ­ence on longevity. James Vau­pel, of the Max Planck Insti­tute for Demo­graphic Research, in Ros­tock, Ger­many, notes that only six per cent of how long you’ll live, com­pared with the aver­age, is explained by your par­ents’ longevity; by con­trast, up to ninety per cent of how tall you are, com­pared with the aver­age, is explained by your par­ents’ height. Even genet­i­cally iden­ti­cal twins vary widely in life span: the typ­i­cal gap is more than fif­teen years.”

Fas­ci­nat­ing. First, let’s appre­ci­ate our incred­i­ble life expectancy today; we are lit­er­ally push­ing the envelop of how to main­tain healthy brains and bod­ies. By his­tor­i­cal stan­dards, many of us are liv­ing on “bor­rowed” time. Sec­ond, there you have some evi­dence for the impor­tance of our expe­ri­ence and our lifestyle on how long we live. In terms of healthy aging, on aver­age, nur­ture seems to be at least as impor­tant as nature, and the one more in our con­trol to take action today.

You can learn more on the Suc­cess­ful Aging of the Healthy Brain: a beau­ti­ful essay by Mar­ian Dia­mond on how to keep our brains and minds active and fit through­out our lives.

Related blog posts

• What does “nor­mal aging” mean? Do we all age the same way?
• Easy Steps to Improve Your Brain Health Now
• Bill Clin­ton on health care and wellness
• The Upside of Aging-WSJ
• Baby Boomers, Healthy Aging and Job Performance