Cognitive stimulation is beneficial, even after diagnosis of Alzheimer’s

By Dr. Pascale Michelon | October 20, 2010 |

An inter­est­ing arti­cle in Nature Reviews last month reviewed sev­er­al stud­ies show­ing that cog­ni­tive inter­ven­tion can be ben­e­fi­cial even for indi­vid­u­als already diag­nosed with Alzheimer’s Dis­ease (Buschert et al., 2010). The arti­cle shows that patients with mild-to-mod­­er­ate demen­tia can ben­e­fit from a range of cog­ni­tive inter­ven­tions: from train­ing of par­tial­ly spared cog­ni­tive func­tions to train­ing on…

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Walking increases brain volume and reduces risks of decline

By Dr. Pascale Michelon | October 15, 2010 |

In the lat­est issue of Neu­rol­o­gy a study by Erick­son et al. (2010) sug­gests that walk­ing reg­u­lar­ly can increase brain vol­ume and reduce the risks of devel­op­ing cog­ni­tive impair­ment. The researchers stared with 2 mains facts: Gray mat­ter vol­ume shrinks with age, often lead­ing to cog­ni­tive decline. Phys­i­cal exer­cise seems to be neu­ro-pro­tec­­tor (see our previous…

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Another victim of the BBC/Nature “brain training” experiment

By Dr. Pascale Michelon | October 8, 2010 |

Have you read the cov­er sto­ry of the New Sci­en­tist this week: Men­tal mus­cle: six ways to boost your brain? The arti­cle, which includes good infor­ma­tion on brain food, the val­ue of med­i­ta­tion, etc., starts by say­ing that: “Brain train­ing does­n’t work, but there are lots of oth­er ways to give your grey mat­ter a…

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