What Medicare Will Cover Even if You’re Not Likely to Get Bet­ter (The New York Times):

“Should the fed­eral gov­ern­ment cover the costs of many kinds of treat­ments for patients who aren’t going to get any bet­ter? It didn’t, for many years. But after the set­tle­ment of a land­mark class-action this week, Medicare will soon Read the rest of this entry »

Quick heads-up: Inter­est­ing upcom­ing event (Oct. 25-26th) in Nice, France, orga­nized by the French Amer­i­can Biotech­nol­ogy Sym­po­sium, focused on “Con­tri­bu­tion of dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies to main­tain the auton­omy of aging peo­ple,” and dis­cussing inno­va­tion around telemed­i­cine, med­ical devices in home care, bio­engi­neer­ing, neu­rostim­u­la­tion, neural implants.

The orga­niz­ers want to engage French and Amer­i­can aca­d­e­mic researchers, stu­dents, sci­en­tists involved in R&D projects, entre­pre­neurs and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the ICT and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal industries.

To Learn More, visit FABS 2012.

Related arti­cles:

• Gait Changes as Indi­ca­tor of Cog­ni­tive Health Decline
• From Anti-Alzheimer’s ‘Magic Bul­lets’ to True Brain Health

We are pleased to offer the first self-paced course designed to equip life­long learn­ers with the under­stand­ing and infor­ma­tion required to apply neu­ro­plas­tic­ity and cog­ni­tive reserve find­ings and tools to enhance their own brain health and functionality.

Detailed infor­ma­tion is avail­able at How to Be Your Own Brain Fit­ness Coach. Reg­is­tered par­tic­i­pants can imme­di­ately log into the course and gain access to four recorded lectures–each last­ing two hours– and to online mate­ri­als and dis­cus­sions. Reg­is­tra­tion fees are $95, and stu­dents have six months to com­plete course.

TOP 40 QUESTIONS ON BRAIN HEALTH, BRAIN FITNESS AND BRAIN TRAINING TO BE ADDRESSED BY THE COURSE: Read the rest of this entry »

In an increas­ingly knowledge-based and innovation-driven econ­omy, human brains—not finan­cial capital—are becom­ing the pri­mary dri­vers of busi­ness suc­cess. Engaged, cre­ative cit­i­zens and work­ers mean the dif­fer­ence between suc­cess and fail­ure at the orga­ni­za­tional and soci­etal levels.

Look­ing at the prob­lem from the per­spec­tive of brain health, there are Read the rest of this entry »

“Within 20 years, older adults will account for almost 25% of the U.S. pop­u­la­tion. From a health­care per­spec­tive, a major con­cern with an aging pop­u­la­tion is a higher preva­lence of age-related impair­ment in cog­ni­tive func­tion. This expand­ing aging pop­u­la­tion high­lights the need to iden­tify quick, effec­tive, low-cost solu­tions to delay patho­log­i­cal cog­ni­tive decline asso­ci­ated with aging. Devel­op­ing inter­ven­tions that can pre­serve cog­ni­tive func­tion can also help to main­tain qual­ity of life and inde­pen­dence well into old age. With the help of new tech­nol­ogy, Read the rest of this entry »

If you fol­lowed lat­est head­lines sur­round­ing the release of the National Alzheimer’s Plan, you’d prob­a­bly con­clude that the likely solu­tion to main­tain life­long brain health is sim­ple: sim­ply wait until 2025 for a “magic bul­let” to be dis­cov­ered, to cure (or end or pre­vent) Alzheimer’s dis­ease and aging asso­ci­ated cog­ni­tive decline. These kinds of beliefs, often rein­forced by doc­tors and adver­tis­ing, may explain the bil­lions spent today by pharma com­pa­nies on dis­cov­er­ing new com­pounds, and by con­sumers on sup­ple­ments like ginkgo biloba. But Read the rest of this entry »

Dr. Stern will dis­cuss the lat­est evi­dence and impli­ca­tions on What the Cog­ni­tive Reserve Means for Brain Health, at the upcom­ing 2012 Sharp­Brains Vir­tual Sum­mit (June 7-14th, 2012).

Dr. Yaakov Stern directs the Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science Divi­sion of the Sergievsky Cen­ter and is Direc­tor of Neu­ropsy­chol­ogy for the Mem­ory Dis­or­ders Clinic at the New York State Psy­chi­atric Insti­tute. He also directs the post-doctoral train­ing pro­gram Neu­ropsy­chol­ogy Read the rest of this entry »