January Update: The Federal Trade Commission orders Focus Education to stop making unsubstantiated brain training claims

. Time for Sharp­Brains’ Jan­u­ary e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing a wealth of brain health insights, neu­ro­science research reports, a land­mark action by the Fed­er­al Trade Commission…and some quick brain teasers. Enjoy! New research: Brain health research study by AARP: Con­sumers pur­sue brain train­ing to sup­port a more enjoy­able, self-man­aged life Can self-mon­i­­tor­ing help pro­mote aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess, and reduce ADHD symp­toms, in col­lege students…

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Study: Harnessing a virtual reality brain training game to diagnose mild cognitive impairment (MCI)

. Vir­tu­al real­i­ty brain train­ing game can detect mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment, a con­di­tion that often pre­dates Alzheimer’s dis­ease (press release): “Geek researchers demon­strat­ed the poten­tial of a vir­tu­al super­mar­ket cog­ni­tive train­ing game as a screen­ing tool for patients with mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment (MCI) among a sam­ple of old­er adults… In an arti­cle pub­lished in the…

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Update: The Future of Preventive Brain Medicine

Time for Sharp­Brains’ Jan­u­ary 2012 eNewslet­ter, fea­tur­ing in this occa­sion mul­ti­ple thought-pro­­vok­ing per­spec­tives on how emerg­ing neu­ro­science can and should make us rethink pre­vail­ing prac­tices in edu­ca­tion, healthy aging and pre­ven­tive med­i­cine.   Fea­tured Per­spec­tives: The Future of Pre­ven­tive Brain Med­i­cine: Break­ing Down the Cog­ni­tion & Alzheimer’s Dis­ease Alpha­bet Soup, by Dr. Dhar­ma Singh Khal­sa When 1 +…

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Research: Does Nintendo Brain Age work as a brain training game?

A new study tries to, but unfor­tu­nate­ly does­n’t, answer that ques­tion. Study: Brain Train­ing Game Improves Exec­u­tive Func­tions and Pro­cess­ing Speed in the Elder­ly: A Ran­dom­ized Con­trolled Tri­al (PLoS ONE). “Con­clu­sions: Our results showed that play­ing Brain Age for 4 weeks could lead to improve cog­ni­tive func­tions (exec­u­tive func­tions and pro­cess­ing speed) in the elder­ly. This result indicated…

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Cognitive Health News Round-Up

Round-up of inter­est­ing recent news on cog­ni­tive health and fit­ness: the field is in motion. 1) Bay­crest cre­ates Cen­tre for Brain Fit­ness with $10-mil­lion Invest­ment from Ontario Gov­ern­ment (Cana­da NewsWire) 2) Cog­ni­tive tests are the best way to select med­ical stu­dents (EurekAlert) 3) High blood pres­sure hard on the aging brain (Reuters) 4) Alzheimer’s tests ben­e­fi­cial for seniors (Atlanta-Jour­­nal…

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