Below you can find the full tran­script of our engag­ing Q&A ses­sion yes­ter­day on holis­tic brain health with clin­i­cal neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist Dr. Paul Nuss­baum, author of Save Your Brain. You can learn more about the full Brain Fit­ness Q&A Series Here.

Per­haps one of the best exchanges was: Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

Stronger Effort Needed To Pre­vent Men­tal, Emo­tional, And Behav­ioral Dis­or­ders in Young peo­ple, Experts Urge (Sci­ence Daily)

- “The fed­eral gov­ern­ment should make pre­vent­ing men­tal, emo­tional, and behav­ioral dis­or­ders and pro­mot­ing men­tal health in young peo­ple a national pri­or­ity, says a new report from the National Research Coun­cil and Insti­tute of Medicine.”

- “Research has shown that a num­ber of pro­grams are effec­tive at pre­vent­ing these prob­lems and pro­mot­ing men­tal health, the report says. Such pro­grams could be imple­mented more broadly, but cur­rently there is no clear fed­eral pres­ence to lead these efforts.  The White House should cre­ate an entity that can coor­di­nate agency ini­tia­tives in this area, set pub­lic goals for pre­ven­tion, and pro­vide needed research and fund­ing to achieve them, said the com­mit­tee that wrote the report.”

- “There is a sub­stan­tial gap between what is known about pre­vent­ing men­tal, emo­tional, and behav­ioral dis­or­ders and what is actu­ally being done,” said Ken­neth E. Warner, com­mit­tee chair and dean of the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan School of Pub­lic Health.”

Spec­tac­u­lar arti­cle by Dr. Denise Park in this month’s Cere­brum:

Work­ing Later in Life May Facil­i­tate Neural Health

- “Carmi Schooler at the National Insti­tutes of Health, using a tech­nique that allowed him to assess causal rela­tion­ships, found that adults who per­formed intel­lec­tu­ally chal­leng­ing jobs across their life span showed more cog­ni­tive flex­i­bil­ity in late adult­hood than those who per­formed less demand­ing jobs.“
– “Per­haps the most com­pelling evi­dence regard­ing the impact of novel expe­ri­ences on brain vol­ume and func­tion comes from a study at the Max Planck Insti­tute in Ger­many. Adults with a mean age of 59 spent three months learn­ing to jug­gle three balls. Although only about half the par­tic­i­pants were able to achieve com­pe­tence in this com­plex skill, those who suc­ceeded had increased vol­ume in a mediotem­po­ral area of the visual cor­tex as well as the nucleus accum­bens and the hip­pocam­pus, sug­gest­ing that sus­tained novel expe­ri­ence can increase the sizes of neural struc­tures. Notably, the changes in the nucleus accum­bens and hip­pocam­pus were Read the rest of this entry »

(Please note that this is my per­sonal take at the dis­cus­sions that took place in Dubai as part of the Global Agenda Coun­cil on the Chal­lenges of Geron­tol­ogy put together by the World Eco­nomic Forum, and builds on the work of my col­leagues, but it does not rep­re­sent a for­mal doc­u­ment or state­ment of posi­tion. Sim­ply put, we would like to engage your brain in defin­ing the chal­lenges and outlining/ exe­cut­ing the solutions).

Con­text: The Chal­lenges of the Aging Society

The world is aging. This is occur­ring in two ways: through shifts in the age struc­ture that will even­tu­ally lead to many more peo­ple reach­ing older ages than ever before, and through con­tin­ued suc­cess in extend­ing life. Less than 100 years ago, life expectancy was between 30 to 40 years. Today, close to 800 mil­lion cit­i­zens are 60 and over.

And aging in health­ier ways. Aging has incor­rectly been asso­ci­ated with decline and decay, when in fact many peo­ple live healthy into older ages. There has been a syn­chro­nous exten­sion in life expectancy and qual­ity of life — the aver­age 65-year-old today is much health­ier, phys­i­cally and men­tally, than the aver­age 50-year-old of 100–150 years ago — when most exist­ing insti­tu­tions were envi­sioned and created.

Healthy life can be fur­ther extended with exist­ing knowl­edge. The fact is the onset and pro­gres­sion of fatal and dis­abling dis­eases, dis­or­ders, and dis­abil­ity can be post­poned using well-researched basic mea­sures of pub­lic health, envi­ron­men­tal and behav­ioural changes, and med­ical tech­nol­ogy inter­ven­tions. The same meth­ods may be used to improve or main­tain men­tal and phys­i­cal functioning.

Our health­care and retire­ment sys­tems are on bank­ruptcy track — their premises are out­dated. Exist­ing insti­tu­tions, poli­cies and atti­tudes do not reflect the points out­lined above, hav­ing been devel­oped for a soci­ety that no longer exists. We need to get on the right track: Read the rest of this entry »

Here you have the twice-a-month newslet­ter with our most pop­u­lar blog posts. Please remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, sim­ply by sub­mit­ting your email at the top of this page.

Quick, Are videogames good or bad?

That’s an impos­si­ble ques­tion. Good or bad for what? What  spe­cific games are we talk­ing about? More impor­tantly, what are they sub­sti­tut­ing for, given time is a lim­ited resource?  Con­trib­u­tor Jeremy Adam Smith, man­ag­ing direc­tor of Greater Good mag­a­zine, offers an in-depth review on the trade-offs videogames present in: Play­ing the Blame Game.

News Round-Up

Math Inno­va­tion in UK Schools: a recent (and unpub­lished) study seems to sup­port the poten­tial role for “Seri­ous Games” in edu­ca­tion. Learn­ing and Teach­ing Scot­land reports sig­nif­i­cant improve­ments in pupils’ con­cen­tra­tion and behav­ior, on top of math skills, after using Nin­tendo Brain Train­ing game.

The arti­cle Clumsy kids more likely to become obese adults: study (CBC)…

- “The study was based on tests of about 11,000 peo­ple in Britain who were tested for hand con­trol, co-ordination and clum­si­ness at age seven and 11, and were then fol­lowed until age 33.”

- “Prof. Scott Mont­gomery of the Karolin­ska Insti­tutet in Stock­holm and his col­leagues at Impe­r­ial Col­lege Lon­don in Eng­land said they pur­posely chose mea­sure­ments of fine hand con­trol such as pick­ing up matches, rather than those likely to be influ­enced by par­tic­i­pat­ing in sports, such as catch­ing balls.”

- “While it is often assumed that the cog­ni­tive impair­ments seen in adult obe­sity are a con­se­quence of excess weight, that could be putting the chicken before the egg, the researchers say”

…reminds me of Judith Beck’s words on how to “Train Your Brain to Think Like a Thin Person”

- “The main mes­sage of cog­ni­tive ther­apy over­all, and its appli­ca­tion in the diet world, is straight-forward: prob­lems los­ing weight are not one’s fault. Prob­lems sim­ply reflect lack of skills–skills that can be acquired and mas­tered through prac­tice. Read the rest of this entry »