The L.A. Times reports today the neg­a­tive results of the lat­est ran­dom­ized trial test­ing the effects of DHA sup­ple­ments on Alzheimer’s symp­toms (DHA is an omega-3 fatty acid).

The study … exam­ined 402 peo­ple with mild to mod­er­ate Alzheimer’s. They were ran­domly assigned to take 2 grams a day of omega-3 cap­sules con­tain­ing docosa­hexaenoic acid (or DHA) or a placebo cap­sule. The par­tic­i­pants were fol­lowed for 18 months, and their cog­ni­tive and func­tional abil­i­ties were reassessed. They also under­went MRI to look at the brain.

There was no ben­e­fit seen in the patients tak­ing omega-3 fatty-acid sup­ple­ments in either brain vol­ume or cog­ni­tive function.

Com­ments: Does this study mean that DHA or omega-3 in gen­eral are not good for the brain? No! This study sug­gests that tak­ing DHA sup­ple­ments after Alzheimer’s diag­no­sis is not help­ful. Prior evi­dence shows that omega-3 con­sump­tion (espe­cially DHA) long before the onset of Alzheimer’s symp­toms reduces the risk of devel­op­ing the dis­ease. Indeed, sev­eral stud­ies have shown that eat­ing fish (the pri­mary source in our diet of omega-3 fatty acids) is asso­ci­ated with a reduced risk of cog­ni­tive decline or dementia.

The authors of the JAMA study also spec­u­late that DHA sup­ple­ments could be used as a treat­ment for peo­ple who have not yet been diag­nosed with Alzheimer’s but are already devel­op­ing demen­tia pathol­ogy in their brain: “Indi­vid­u­als inter­me­di­ate between healthy aging and demen­tia, such as those with mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment, might derive ben­e­fit from DHA sup­ple­men­ta­tion, although fur­ther study will be nec­es­sary to test this hypoth­e­sis.” 

If you could, you would. You can, but pre­fer not to know it?

More than any other organ, your brain is up to you. You are what you think, not just what you eat. Here’s some food for thought:

Design your Mind

Set­ting cog­ni­tive and behav­ioral goals raises chal­leng­ing and wor­thy ques­tions: What do you want from your brain? Will you know it when you achieve it?

To attain the brain of our choos­ing, we must under­stand our selves and cur­rent abil­i­ties. Intro­spec­tion and curios­ity are help­ful if they trig­ger and sus­tain the effort to enrich the mind. How­ever, objec­tive infor­ma­tion which leads to informed assess­ment of brain func­tion is often lacking.

Mind your Brain

Hon­esty. Open­ness. Self-awareness.

Irrefutable virtues, but in prac­tice most peo­ple fall short. Few reg­u­larly appraise their brain skills; even so, the abil­ity to accu­rately judge one’s own men­tal per­for­mance is not guar­an­teed. I believe the first step to mind­ing the brain is shed­ding hang-ups while offer­ing and solic­it­ing frank feed­back from fam­ily and close con­fi­dants. In the clin­i­cal set­ting, rou­tine cog­ni­tive screen­ing and “men­tal check ups” are not cur­rently prac­ticed, in part due to time con­straints and lim­ited util­ity of tra­di­tional paper-and-pencil tests. From a pub­lic health per­spec­tive, the U.S. Pre­ven­ta­tive Task Force reviewed Read the rest of this entry »

I have fallen behind on answer­ing a few excel­lent recent com­ments –on cog­ni­tive train­ing over­all, Posit Sci­ence and Alzheimer’s Aus­tralia, geron­tol­ogy and the brain, the value of videogames-, so let me address them here:

1) Nicks says (Brain Fit­ness Pro­grams For Seniors Hous­ing, Health­care and Insur­ance Providers: Eval­u­a­tion Checklist)

“This report is inter­est­ing and it addresses many very impor­tant ques­tions that cog­ni­tive neu­ropsy­chol­o­gists, such as myself have. I feel that many of the prod­ucts on the mar­ket now make claims which are gen­er­ally unsubstantiated.

I find it con­cern­ing that many of these pro­grammes have been mar­keted to tar­get older adults in par­tic­u­lar with­out mak­ing any spe­cific state­ment on whether the activ­i­ties are ben­e­fi­cial and have been sup­ported with empir­i­cal research.

i have recently con­ducted a cog­ni­tive inter­ven­tion study which used a large array of out­come mea­sures which focus on Read the rest of this entry »

In the past two days, The New York Times has pub­lished two excel­lent arti­cles on brain and cog­ni­tive fit­ness. Despite appear­ing in sep­a­rate sec­tions (tech­nol­ogy and editorial), the two have more in com­mon than imme­di­ately meets the eye. Both raise key ques­tions that politi­cians, health pol­icy mak­ers, busi­ness leaders, educators and consumers should pay atten­tion to.

1) First, Exer­cise Your Brain, or Else You’ll … Uh …, by Katie Hafner (5/3/08). Some quotes:

- “At the same time, boomers are seiz­ing on a mount­ing body of evi­dence that sug­gests that brains con­tain more plas­tic­ity than pre­vi­ously thought, and many peo­ple are tak­ing mat­ters into their own hands, doing brain fit­ness exer­cises with the same inten­sity with which they attack a treadmill.”

Read the rest of this entry »

We had a very fun ses­sion titled Teach­ing Brain Fit­ness in Your Com­mu­nity at an Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging (ASA) con­fer­ence for health pro­fes­sion­als a cou­ple of weeks ago. Full house, with over 60 atten­dants and very good par­tic­i­pa­tion, show­ing great inter­est in the topic. I can’t wait to see the evaluations.

These are some of the resources I promised as a follow-up, which can be use­ful to every­one inter­ested in our field:

Good gen­eral arti­cles in the busi­ness and gen­eral media:

Change or Die

Want a sharp mind for your golden years? Start now

You’re Wiser Now

On how new neu­rons are born and grow in the adult brain:

Salk Sci­en­tists Demon­strate For The First Time That Newly Born Brain Cells Are Func­tional In The Adult Brain

Old Brains, New Tricks

On the sur­pris­ing plas­tic­ity and devel­op­ment poten­tial through­out life:

Brain Plas­tic­ity, Lan­guage Pro­cess­ing and Reading

Jug­gling Jug­gles the Brain

Suc­cess­ful Aging of the Healthy Brain

Other impor­tant aspects:

Stress and the Brain

Exer­cise and the Brain

Humor, Laugh­ter and The Brain

On the impor­tance and impact of men­tal stim­u­la­tion and train­ing: Read the rest of this entry »

We all know chronic stress is bad for our heart, our weight, and our mood, but how about our mem­ory? Inter­est­ingly, acute stress can help you focus and remem­ber things more vividly. Chronic stress, on the other hand, reduces your abil­ity to focus and can specif­i­cally dam­age cells in the hip­pocam­pus, a brain struc­ture crit­i­cal to encod­ing short term memory.

When is stress chronic? When you feel out of con­trol of your life. You may feel irri­ta­ble or anx­ious. While every indi­vid­ual varies in their response the type and quan­tity of stress, there are some things you can do to feel more in con­trol of your envi­ron­ment. This sense of empow­er­ment can lower your stress, and as a result, help your memory.

What are some ways to feel in con­trol and less stressed?

1. Use a cal­en­dar to sched­ule impor­tant things. Give items a date and a priority.
2. Make a list of things that need to be done. Even if it’s a long list, it can be reward­ing to cross off items as you com­plete them.
3. Use a con­tem­pla­tive prac­tice like yoga or med­i­ta­tion to calm your mind and body or try using a heart rate vari­abil­ity sen­sor to learn to relax and focus your mind and body.
4. Ask your­self how impor­tant some­thing truly is to you. Maybe you’re stress­ing over some­thing that you are bet­ter off just let­ting go.
5. Del­e­gate what you can.
6. Get reg­u­lar exer­cise to burn off those excess stress hormones.
7. Get enough sleep so that you can recharge your batteries.
8. Eat well and reduce your caf­feine and sugar intake which can add to your sense of jitteriness.
9. Main­tain your social net­work. Shar­ing con­cerns with friends and fam­ily can help you feel less overwhelmed.
10. Give your­self 10 min­utes just to relax every day.

Fur­ther Read­ing on Stress and Mem­ory
Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers by Robert M. Sapol­sky, Ph.D.
A Primer on Mul­ti­task­ing
Sim­ple Stress Test
Quick Stress Buster
Is there such thing as GOOD stress?
Brain Yoga: Stress — Killing You Softly

Here is ques­tion 16 of 25 from Brain Fit­ness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Ques­tions.

Ques­tion:
Are yoga and med­i­ta­tion good for my brain?

Key Points:

• Yoga, med­i­ta­tion, and visu­al­iza­tion are all excel­lent ways to learn to man­age your stress levels.
• Reduc­ing stress, and the stress hor­mones, in your sys­tem is crit­i­cal to your brain and over­all fitness.

Answer:
Yes. It’s clear that our soci­ety has changed faster than our genes. Instead of being faced with phys­i­cal, imme­di­ately life-threatening crises that demand instant action, these days we deal with events and ill­nesses that gnaw away at us slowly, with­out any stress release.
Read the rest of this entry »

Jon Barron’s blog high­lighted this recent press release from The Soci­ety for Neu­ro­science.

For decades, it was believed that the adult brain did not pro­duce new neu­rons after birth. But that notion has been dis­pelled by research in the last ten years. It became clear by the mid– to late-1990’s that the brain does, in fact, pro­duce new neu­rons through­out the lifespan.

This phe­nom­e­non, known as neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis, occurs in most species, includ­ing humans, but the degree to which it occurs and the extent to which it occurs is still a mat­ter of some con­tro­versy, says Tracey Shors, PhD, at Rut­gers University.

“How­ever, there is no ques­tion that neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis occurs in the hip­pocam­pus, a brain region involved in aspects of learn­ing and mem­ory. Thou­sands of new cells are pro­duced there each day, although many die with weeks of their birth.” Shors’ recent stud­ies have shown a cor­re­la­tion in ani­mal mod­els between learn­ing and cell sur­vival in the hippocampus.

Read the rest of this entry »