Promoting Healthy, Meaningful Aging Through Social Involvement: Building an Experience Corps

(Editor’s note: Path­ways respon­si­ble for high­­er-order think­ing in the pre­frontal cor­tex (PFC), or exec­u­tive cen­ter of the brain, remain vul­ner­a­ble through­out life—during crit­i­cal ear­­ly-life devel­op­men­tal win­dows, when the PFC ful­ly matures in the ear­ly 20s, and final­ly from declines asso­ci­at­ed with old age. At all ages, phys­i­cal activ­i­ty and PFC-nav­i­­gat­ed social con­nec­tions are essen­tial components…

Read More

Experience Corps: Promoting Healthy, Meaningful Aging Through Social Involvement

The cur­rent issue of Cere­brum –a great pub­li­ca­tion of the Dana Foun­da­tion– includes the excel­lent in-depth arti­cle Pro­mot­ing Healthy, Mean­ing­ful Aging Through Social Involve­ment: Build­ing an Expe­ri­ence Corps, writ­ten by researcher Michelle Carl­son: “Over the last decade, sci­en­tists made two key dis­cov­er­ies that reframed our under­stand­ing of the adult brain’s poten­tial to ben­e­fit from lifelong…

Read More

A Decade after The Decade of the Brain – Educational and Clinical Implications of Neuroplasticity

(Edi­tor’s Note: In 1990, Con­gress des­ig­nat­ed the 1990s the “Decade of the Brain.” Pres­i­dent George H. W. Bush pro­claimed, “A new era of dis­cov­ery is dawn­ing in brain research.” Dur­ing the ensu­ing decade, sci­en­tists great­ly advanced our under­stand­ing of the brain. The edi­tors of Cere­brum asked the direc­tors of sev­en brain-relat­ed insti­tutes at the National…

Read More

Work (and Juggle) for Cognitive Health

Spec­tac­u­lar arti­cle by Dr. Denise Park in this mon­th’s Cere­brum: Work­ing Lat­er in Life May Facil­i­tate Neur­al Health — “Car­mi School­er at the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health, using a tech­nique that allowed him to assess causal rela­tion­ships, found that adults who per­formed intel­lec­tu­al­ly chal­leng­ing jobs across their life span showed more cog­ni­tive flex­i­bil­i­ty in late…

Read More

Can We Pick Your Brain re. Cognitive Assessments?

If you could, you would. You can, but pre­fer not to know it? More than any oth­er organ, your brain is up to you. You are what you think, not just what you eat. Here’s some food for thought: Design your Mind Set­ting cog­ni­tive and behav­ioral goals rais­es chal­leng­ing and wor­thy ques­tions: What do you want from…

Read More

The Future of Computer-assisted Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

The Wall Street Jour­nal had a very inter­est­ing arti­cle yes­ter­day, titled To Be Young and Anx­i­e­ty-Free, focused on the val­ue of cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py to help chil­dren with high lev­els of anx­i­ety learn how too cope bet­ter and pre­vent the snow­ball sce­nario, when that anx­i­ety grows and spi­rals out of con­trol result­ing in depres­sion and…

Read More