As the pres­i­dent and med­ical direc­tor of the Alzheimer’s Research and Pre­ven­tion Foun­da­tion (ARPF), it’s my job to stay on top of advances in the field of Alzheimer’s research. Recently, a num­ber of arti­cles in the med­ical lit­er­a­ture have caught my atten­tion. They are focused on a par­tic­u­lar ques­tion that con­cerns most Baby Boomers like me: “Is mem­ory loss just a nor­mal part of aging?” Read the rest of this entry »

Bev­erly San­born, Vice Pres­i­dent of Pro­gram Devel­op­ment at Bel­mont Senior Liv­ing and sched­uled 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit Speaker, could not finally speak at the Sum­mit (she was very well replaced by col­league Jeff DeBevec), but for­tu­nately we can share her thought­ful answers to the fol­low­ing four crit­i­cal questions.

1. How would you define “brain fit­ness” vs. “phys­i­cal fit­ness”?

Brain fit­ness and phys­i­cal fit­ness are inter­linked. Each enhances the other and both are essen­tial com­po­nents of suc­cess­ful aging. As we age, the abil­ity to cope with inex­orable chal­lenge to social-emotional-economic well-being is rooted in hav­ing a high level of men­tal alert­ness and a phys­i­cal body that func­tions effi­ciently. But fit­ness is not just a happy con­se­quence of a hardy gene pool. Fit­ness for both brain and brawn requires a com­mit­ted effort, a lot of stretch and sweat, and the con­stant push to reach beyond the com­fort zone. Read the rest of this entry »

In a recently pub­lished sci­en­tific study (see Hall C, et al “Cog­ni­tive activ­i­ties delay onset of mem­ory decline in per­sons who develop demen­tia” Neu­rol­ogy 2009; 73: 356–361), Hall and col­leagues exam­ined how edu­ca­tion and stim­u­lat­ing activ­i­ties may inter­act to con­tribute to cog­ni­tive reserve. The study involved 488 ini­tially healthy peo­ple, aver­age age 79, who enrolled in the Bronx Aging Study between 1980 and 1983. These indi­vid­u­als were fol­lowed for 5 years with assess­ments every 12 to 18 months (start­ing in 1980). At the start of the study, all par­tic­i­pants were asked how many cog­ni­tive activ­i­ties (read­ing, writ­ing, cross­word puz­zles, board or card games, group dis­cus­sions, or play­ing music) they par­tic­i­pated in and for how many days a week. Researchers were able to eval­u­ate the impact of self-reported par­tic­i­pa­tion these activ­i­ties on the onset of accel­er­ated mem­ory decline in 101 indi­vid­u­als who devel­oped demen­tia dur­ing the study.

Results showed that for every “activ­ity day” (par­tic­i­pa­tion in one activ­ity for one day a week) the sub­jects engaged in, they delayed for about two months the onset of rapid mem­ory loss asso­ci­ated with demen­tia. Inter­est­ingly, the pos­i­tive effect of brain-stimulating activ­i­ties in this study appeared to be inde­pen­dent of a person’s level of education.

This is great news as it sug­gests that it is never too late to try to build up brain reserve. The more brain stim­u­lat­ing activ­i­ties one does and the more often, the bet­ter for a stronger cog­ni­tive reserve.

The cog­ni­tive reserve hypoth­e­sis sug­gests that indi­vid­u­als with more cog­ni­tive reserve can expe­ri­ence more Alzheimer’s dis­ease pathol­ogy in the brain (more plaques and tan­gles) with­out devel­op­ing Alzheimer’s dis­ease symptoms.

How does that work? Sci­en­tists are not sure but two pos­si­bil­i­ties are con­sid­ered.
1. One is that more cog­ni­tive reserve means more brain reserve, that is more neu­rons and con­nec­tions between neu­rons.
2. Another pos­si­bil­ity is that more cog­ni­tive reserve means more com­pen­satory processes (see my pre­vi­ous post “Edu­ca­tion builds Cog­ni­tive Reserve for Alzheimers Dis­ease Pro­tec­tion” for more details.)

Now, one may won­der about the dif­fer­ence types of men­tal stim­u­la­tion avail­able, includ­ing not only puz­zles and such, but struc­tured activ­i­ties such as brain fit­ness soft­ware and med­i­ta­tion. Do we exer­cise our brain every time we think about some­thing? What can one do to exer­cise one’s brain in ways that enhance capac­ity? Does aer­o­bic fit­ness train­ing also exer­cise one’s brain? What types of method­olo­gies and prod­ucts are avail­able? Do they “work”? Are all the same?

Those are the types of ques­tions we wanted to address in the book The Sharp­Brains Guide To Brain Fit­ness (avail­able via Amazon.com). We are proud of the recog­ni­tion the book has started to obtain, includ­ing endorse­ments by lead­ing scientists:

“The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness is the only book that I know of that seam­lessly inte­grates lat­est infor­ma­tion about cog­ni­tive health across the lifes­pan, with inter­views with active researchers exam­in­ing cog­ni­tive main­te­nance and enhance­ment, along with reviews of com­mer­cial prod­ucts tar­geted to cog­ni­tive enhance­ment. The book should be very use­ful to any­one inter­ested in brain care, both health care pro­fes­sion­als and the pub­lic at large”.
— Arthur Kramer, Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chol­ogy at Uni­ver­sity of Illinois

“This Sharp­Brains book pro­vides a very valu­able ser­vice to a wide com­mu­nity inter­ested in learn­ing and brain top­ics. I found it inter­est­ing and help­ful“
- Michael Pos­ner, Emer­i­tus Pro­fes­sor of Neu­ro­science at the Uni­ver­sity of Ore­gon, and first recip­i­ent of the Dogan Prize

– Pas­cale Mich­e­lon, Ph. D., is Sharp­Brains’ Research Man­ager for Edu­ca­tional Projects. Dr. Mich­e­lon has a Ph.D. in Cog­ni­tive Psy­chol­ogy and has worked as a Research Sci­en­tist at Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­sity in Saint Louis, in the Psy­chol­ogy Depart­ment. She con­ducted sev­eral research projects to under­stand how the brain makes use of visual infor­ma­tion and mem­o­rizes facts. She is now an Adjunct Fac­ulty at Wash­ing­ton University.

Ref­er­ences:

- Study: Hall C, et al “Cog­ni­tive activ­i­ties delay onset of mem­ory decline in per­sons who develop demen­tia” Neu­rol­ogy 2009; 73: 356–361

- Book: The Sharp­Brains Guide To Brain Fit­ness: 18 Inter­views with Sci­en­tists, Prac­ti­cal Advice, and Prod­uct Reviews, to Keep Your Brain Sharp

(Editor’s Note: I recently came across an excel­lent book and resource, The Alzheimer’s Action Plan: The Experts’ Guide to the Best Diag­no­sis and Treat­ment for Mem­ory Prob­lems, recently released in paper­back. Dr. Murali Doraiswamy, one of the authors and lead­ing Alzheimer’s expert, kindly helped us cre­ate a 2-part arti­cle series to share with Sharp­Brains read­ers advice on a very impor­tant ques­tion, “How can we help the pub­lic at large to dis­tin­guish Alzheimer’s Dis­ease from nor­mal aging — so that an inter­est in early iden­ti­fi­ca­tion doesn’t trans­late into unneeded wor­ries?” What fol­lows is an excerpt from the book, pages 72–78, dis­cussing the Pros and Cons of the most com­mon assessments).

—

While no sin­gle test (other than a brain biopsy, which is a very inva­sive and risky pro­ce­dure) can con­clu­sively prove that a per­son has Alzheimer’s, many tests can give us a good idea. A list of all the tests that help us assess mem­ory and think­ing prob­lems appears at the end of this chap­ter. Mean­while, let’s take a good look at the whys and hows of a thor­ough mem­ory assessment.

WHAT A DIFFERENCE AN EXTRA TEST CAN MAKE

To under­stand why get­ting tested (and retested as symp­toms change and the dis­ease pro­gresses) is impor­tant, check out the expe­ri­ence of Kather­ine, who went to the doc­tor com­plain­ing of a mem­ory slow­down. She took five of the most impor­tant neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal tests, which assess brain func­tion with­out actu­ally phys­i­cally look­ing at the brain. Then she under­went brain scans, a car­dio­vas­cu­lar workup, and blood tests to see what else was going on that might be under­min­ing her men­tal func­tion. 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.”

(Editor’s Note: I recently came across an excel­lent book and resource, The Alzheimer’s Action Plan: The Experts’ Guide to the Best Diag­no­sis and Treat­ment for Mem­ory Prob­lems, just released in paper­back. Dr. Murali Doraiswamy, one of the authors and lead­ing Alzheimer’s expert, kindly helped us cre­ate a 2-part arti­cle series to share with Sharp­Brains read­ers advice on a very impor­tant ques­tion, “How can we help the pub­lic at large to dis­tin­guish Alzheimer’s Dis­ease from nor­mal aging — so that an inter­est in early iden­ti­fi­ca­tion doesn’t trans­late into unneeded wor­ries?” What fol­lows is an excerpt from the book, pages 3–8).

—

As it turns out, Jane did not have Alzheimer’s. She con­sulted a doc­tor, who, in doc­s­peak, told her that the pas­sage of time (get­ting older) had taken a slight toll on her once-superquick mem­ory. She was slow­ing down a lit­tle, and if she relaxed, the name or date or other bit of infor­ma­tion she needed would come to her soon enough. She was still good at her job and home life. She had sim­ply joined the ranks of the wor­ried well.

Nor­mal brain aging, begin­ning as early as the for­ties in some peo­ple, may include:

• Tak­ing longer to learn or remem­ber information
• Hav­ing dif­fi­culty pay­ing atten­tion or con­cen­trat­ing in the midst of distractions
• For­get­ting such basics as an anniver­sary or the names of friends
• Need­ing more reminders or mem­ory cues, such as promi­nent appoint­ment cal­en­dars, reminder notes, a phone with a well­stocked speed dial

Although they may need some assis­tance, older peo­ple with­out a men­tal dis­or­der retain their abil­ity to do their errands, han­dle money, find their way to famil­iar areas, and behave appropriately.

How does this com­pare to a per­son with Alzheimer’s? When Alzheimer’s slows the brain’s machin­ery, peo­ple begin to lose their abil­ity to Read the rest of this entry »

A cou­ple of recent research find­ings are mak­ing the media rounds, bring­ing much needed atten­tion to the high Alzheimer’s rates among Lati­nos and to pre­ven­tive approaches based on the Cog­ni­tive Reserve — such as, what jobs we choose:

More Alzheimer’s risk for His­pan­ics, stud­ies find (Inter­na­tional Her­ald Tribune):

- Stud­ies sug­gest that many His­pan­ics may have more risk fac­tors for devel­op­ing demen­tia than other groups, and a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber appear to be get­ting Alzheimer’s ear­lier. And sur­veys indi­cate that Lati­nos, less likely to see doc­tors because of finan­cial and lan­guage bar­ri­ers, more often mis­take demen­tia symp­toms for nor­mal aging, delay­ing diagnosis.

- “This is the tip of the ice­berg of a huge pub­lic health chal­lenge,” said Yanira Cruz, pres­i­dent of the National His­panic Coun­cil on Aging. “We really need to Read the rest of this entry »

Here you are have the bi-monthly Digest of our most Pop­u­lar blog posts. (Also, remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive our blog RSS feed, or to our newslet­ter at the top of this page if you want to receive this digest by email).

Brain Fit­ness News and Events

Upcom­ing Events: I will be speak­ing at five Health, Edu­ca­tion and Gam­ing events over the next cou­ple of months to intro­duce find­ings from our recent mar­ket report. Please intro­duce your­self if you attend any of these events.

Pre­vent­ing Mem­ory Loss-Special Issue: Con­gres­sional Quar­terly Researcher, one of the main pub­li­ca­tions on Capi­tol Hill, pub­lished an impres­sive 24-page spe­cial issue titled Pre­vent­ing Mem­ory Loss. Highly rec­om­mended if you want to be on top of the lat­est research trends and their pol­icy implications.

Read the rest of this entry »

We just received these two very thought-provoking essays on Alzheimer’s Dis­ease and brain health, as part of a writ­ing work­shop, led by Susan Hill in Lake­land, Florida, with a group of grade 9–11 homeschoolers.

With­out fur­ther ado, here you are both Essays:

Essay A. Pre­vent­ing Alzheimer’s at Work

– By Josh H

5,000,000: that is the num­ber of peo­ple in the United States alone who are affected by Alzheimer’s dis­ease. Research has shown that those who held jobs such as san­i­ta­tion work­ers or trash col­lec­tors in their 30s, 40s, and 50s are more at risk for Alzheimer’s dis­ease than peo­ple who held jobs such as doc­tors or sci­en­tists at the same age. If every­one knew this, the world would ben­e­fit, and it could impact the lives of everyone.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ever won­dered what explains the some­times sur­real, often mis­guided, health poli­cies by our gov­ern­ment? Well,  it is beyond our hum­ble brains to cap­ture and artic­u­late what may be going on…but we now see that lack of access to qual­ity infor­ma­tion is cer­tainly not the main prob­lem. Decision-making processes, and struc­tural incen­tives, would prob­a­bly merit more attention.…

I men­tion this because we are really impressed by the just-published 24-page spe­cial issue on Pre­vent­ing Mem­ory Loss by Con­gres­sional Quar­terly Researcher, one of the main pub­li­ca­tions in Capi­tol Hill.

The pub­li­ca­tion is not free, but worth the price for any­one active pro­fes­sion­ally in the health­care sec­tor, or inter­ested in learn­ing about lat­est research and pol­icy trends, from aca­d­e­mics to stu­dents. You can buy Buy the Elec­tronic PDF ($4.95) or Buy the Printed Copy ($15 — $5 dis­count using pro­mo­tion code “L8BRAIN” = $10).

Descrip­tion

As the nation’s baby boomers age, they are increas­ingly wor­ried that their mem­o­ries will dete­ri­o­rate — and with good rea­son. An esti­mated 10 mil­lion boomers will develop Alzheimer’s dis­ease or another memory-destroying neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive con­di­tion in the com­ing years. Pol­icy mak­ers and health offi­cials worry that the result­ing bulge in the num­ber of suf­fer­ers will bur­den the nation’s already strained health-care sys­tem. In the wake of these con­cerns, a vibrant brain-fitness indus­try is offer­ing a vari­ety of ways to help peo­ple keep their brains healthy, includ­ing the use of cognition-enhancing drugs and exer­cise. But many experts say much of what the pub­lic is being told is of lim­ited value, at best. Inten­si­fied brain research begun years ago at the National Insti­tutes of Health is just now begin­ning to pro­duce data that sci­en­tists hope will advance efforts to pre­vent mem­ory loss, but they worry that flat fed­eral fund­ing since 2003 may com­pro­mise the drive for solutions.

Read the rest of this entry »