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 »

Inter­est­ing arti­cle on The Dana Foun­da­tion web­site on how to mon­i­tor cog­ni­tive decline in the brain in the very early stages of Alzheimer’s: Func­tional MRI May Be Use­ful for Mon­i­tor­ing Cog­ni­tive Decline in the Elderly (Dana Foundation)

Alzheimer’s researchers have long wanted to find bet­ter ways not only to diag­nose the dis­ease but also to mon­i­tor its pro­gres­sion from the ear­li­est stages.

A new study sug­gests that func­tional mag­netic res­o­nance imag­ing (fMRI), a tech­nique cur­rently used mainly for neu­ro­science research or to guide brain surgery, could be use­ful in this clin­i­cal role.

[…] an ele­gant and thought-provoking study.

Very inter­est­ing arti­cle in the New York Times on the rea­sons behind grow­ing research of how to detect Alzheimer’s Dis­ease: Rare Shar­ing of Data Leads to Progress on Alzheimer’s (New York Times)

(Sit­u­a­tion before) Sci­en­tists were look­ing for bio­mark­ers, but they were not get­ting very far. “The prob­lem in the field was that you had many dif­fer­ent sci­en­tists in many dif­fer­ent uni­ver­si­ties doing their own research with their own patients and with their own meth­ods,” said Dr. Michael W. Weiner of the San Fran­cisco Depart­ment of Vet­er­ans Affairs, who directs ADNI. “Dif­fer­ent peo­ple using dif­fer­ent meth­ods on dif­fer­ent sub­jects in dif­fer­ent places were get­ting dif­fer­ent results, which is not sur­pris­ing. What was needed was to get every­one together and to get a com­mon data set.”

(Sit­u­a­tion now) Com­pa­nies as well as aca­d­e­mic researchers are using the data. There have been more than 3,200 down­loads of the entire mas­sive data set and almost a mil­lion down­loads of the data sets con­tain­ing images from brain scans.

Com­ment: as dis­cussed in our recent mar­ket report, we’ll prob­a­bly see sooner rather than later a com­pa­ra­ble effort aimed at find­ing the bio­log­i­cal and or cog­ni­tive mark­ers for the Cog­ni­tive Reserve, the emerg­ing cor­ner­stone for a life­long men­tal well­ness (vs. a disease-specific) approach. For more on the need to stan­dard­ize data and care, read inter­view with Patrick Dono­hue on Rein­vent­ing Brain Care through Pol­icy, Stan­dards, Tech­nol­ogy. For more on the Cog­ni­tive Reserve, read inter­view with Dr. Yaakov Stern.

A roundup of sev­eral excel­lent arti­cles this week:

Keep­ing Your Brain Fit (US News and World Report)

- “In a study of more than 2,800 peo­ple ages 65 or older, Har­vard researchers found that those with at least five social ties—church groups, social groups, reg­u­lar vis­its, or phone calls with fam­ily and friends—were less likely to suf­fer cog­ni­tive decline than those with no social ties.”

- “The work­ing hypoth­e­sis is that it has some­thing to do with stress man­age­ment,” says Mar­i­lyn Albert, a neu­ro­sci­en­tist at Johns Hop­kins and codi­rec­tor of the Alzheimer’s research cen­ter there. In ani­mal stud­ies, a pro­longed ele­va­tion in stress hor­mones dam­ages the hip­pocam­pus. Social engage­ment appears to boost people’s sense of con­trol, which affects their stress level. Cre­ative arts seem to be a highly promis­ing way to increase social engage­ment. George Wash­ing­ton University’s Cohen has found that elderly peo­ple who joined choirs also stepped up their other activ­i­ties dur­ing a 12-month period, while a non­sing­ing con­trol group dropped out of some activ­i­ties. The singers also reported fewer health prob­lems, while the con­trol group reported an increase.”

We Never For­get Any­thing (Any­more) (Pre­ven­tion Magazine)

- “Pro­cess­ing new infor­ma­tion when we’re anx­ious is tough; the stress itself is a dis­trac­tion. Fer­nan­dez taught Lau­rie this relax­ation trick: Read the rest of this entry »

This pro­mo­tion ends April 16th-so make sure you enter if you want to have the chance to win some nice mind and brain exer­cise for free.

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Some weeks we were con­tacted by Sony Pic­tures to pro­vide the Grand Prize for one of their Sweep­stakes pro­grams, for just-released San­dra Bullock’s Pre­mo­ni­tion movie.

We were happy to put together a com­plete Brain Fit­ness Kit, some­thing like a boot camp for the brain (a “brain camp”?), which you can get FOR FREE. The kit is com­posed of:

- One (1) Com­plete Men­tal Work­out Soft­ware pro­gram (Mind­Fit) that helps train mem­ory and other skills (ARV: $149.00)
– One (1) Stress Man­age­ment Biofeed­back pro­gram (Freeze-Framer) (ARV: $320.00)
– One (1) Exer­cise Your Brain DVD (ARV: $20.00)
– One (1) Brain Fit­ness 101 eBook ($12.00)

- Five (5) pri­vate phone-based ses­sions with our Brain Coach (you will hear more about this soon) (ARV: $350.00)
If you want the chance to win this Prize, together with a $1,000 check, you can sim­ply visit Pre­mo­ni­tion Expect the Unex­pected Sweep­stakes pro­gram and fill in your details. There is no cost asso­ci­ated with this pro­mo­tion. This is why you are see­ing ban­ners in this site for the first time.

Good luck!