Collaborative neuroimaging initiative BrainChart helps chart how brains change across the lifespan

For decades, growth charts have been used by pae­di­a­tri­cians as ref­er­ence tools. The charts allow health pro­fes­sion­als to plot and mea­sure a child’s height and weight from birth to young adult­hood. The per­centile scores they pro­vide, espe­cial­ly across mul­ti­ple vis­its, help doc­tors screen for con­di­tions such as obe­si­ty or inad­e­quate growth, which fall at the…

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How to properly “Use it or Lose it”: Kundalini Yoga vs. Crossword Puzzles

Yoga bet­ter than cross­words for pre­vent­ing pre-Alzheimer’s mem­o­ry loss (The Tele­graph): “His­tor­i­cal­ly and anec­do­tal­ly, yoga has been thought to be ben­e­fi­cial in age­ing well, but this is the sci­en­tif­ic demon­stra­tion of that benefit…We’re con­vert­ing his­tor­i­cal wis­dom into the high lev­el of evi­dence required for doc­tors to rec­om­mend ther­a­py to their patients.

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UK study: Dementia rates significantly lower than forecasted–especially for men–highlighting the protective role of lifestyle and education

Drop in demen­tia rates sug­gests dis­ease can be pre­vent­ed, researchers say (The Guardian): “In the UK, demen­tia has fall­en by a fifth over the past 20 years, pos­si­bly down to lifestyle and edu­ca­tion changes, high­light­ing ben­e­fits of pre­ven­ta­tive action… A team from three British uni­ver­si­ties con­clud­ed that as a result the num­ber of new cases…

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First Report of the Council on the Ageing Society

The Coun­cil on the Age­ing Soci­ety is one of the Glob­al Agen­da Coun­cils cre­at­ed by the World Eco­nom­ic Forum in 2008. It address­es glob­al issues asso­ci­at­ed with our age­ing soci­ety and has the task of chal­leng­ing pre­vail­ing assump­tions, mon­i­tor­ing trends, propos­ing solu­tions, devis­ing strate­gies, and mak­ing pub­lic pol­i­cy pro­pos­als. It is com­posed of sci­en­tists, public…

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Council on the Ageing Society, at the Summit of the Global Agenda

Head­ing to Dubai today (a 15-hour direct flight!), com­ing back to San Fran­cis­co next Mon­day. Last year I wrote about this remark­able new ini­tia­tive by the World Eco­nom­ic Forum here (pro­pos­al) and here (reflec­tions, emerg­ing dis­cus­sion). This year’s update: Overview: Net­work of Glob­al Agen­da Coun­cils List of Coun­cils: Here List of Mem­bers: Here Mem­bers of…

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