These days, we all live under con­sid­er­able stress — eco­nomic chal­lenges, job demands, fam­ily ten­sions, always-on tech­nol­ogy and the 24-hour news cycle all con­tribute to cease­less worry. While many have learned to sim­ply “live with it,” this ongo­ing stress can, unless prop­erly man­aged, have a Read the rest of this entry »

Study shows men­tal agility game slows cog­ni­tive decline in older peo­ple (Iowa Now): “Wolin­sky and col­leagues sep­a­rated 681 gen­er­ally healthy med­ical patients in Iowa into four groups—each fur­ther sep­a­rated into those 50 to 64 years of age and those over age 65. One group was given com­put­er­ized cross­word puz­zles, while three other groups were exposed to a video game called Read the rest of this entry »

Phys­i­cal exer­cise and men­tal exer­cise are both ben­e­fi­cial for the brain. Each can improve brain func­tions and decrease risks of cog­ni­tive decline over time. This raises the ques­tion of their com­par­a­tive and com­bined effects: Is one bet­ter than the other? Are their ben­e­fits addi­tive (1 + 1 =2) or per­haps even syn­er­gis­tic (1 + 1 =3)? Read the rest of this entry »

Men­tal exer­cises may pre­vent men­tal decline in seniors (CBC News):  “A review released by the Cana­dian Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion Jour­nal on the pre­ven­tion of cog­ni­tive decline said that med­i­c­i­nal and non-medicinal prod­ucts, and phys­i­cal exer­cise did noth­ing to pre­vent the decline in healthy seniors, but men­tal exer­cises Read the rest of this entry »

I love read­ing the New Yorker. I have writ­ten before about bogus brain games, and about bogus brain train­ing claims. We have pub­lished a 10-question check­list to help con­sumers make informed decisions.

All this is to say I was sur­prised to read a recent New Yorker blog arti­cle titled “Brain games are bogus.” If you are going to make such strong claims, you need to back them up with seri­ous due dili­gence and analy­sis, and explain to read­ers what Read the rest of this entry »

In honor of Brain Aware­ness Week 2013, which starts today, let’s debunk ten myths about brain fit­ness and brain train­ing that remain sur­pris­ingly popular.

Top 10 brain fit­ness and brain train­ing myths, debunked:

Myth 1. Genes deter­mine the fate of our brains.
Fact: Life­long brain plas­tic­ity means that our lifestyles and behav­iors play a sig­nif­i­cant role in how our brains (and there­fore our minds) phys­i­cally evolve.

Myth 2. We are what we eat. Read the rest of this entry »

Accord­ing to a new study, the pop­u­la­tion with Alzheimer’s Dis­ease in the US will triple by 2050: from 4.7 mil­lions in 2010 to 13.8 mil­lions. This empha­sizes the urgent need for more research to find pre­ven­tive mea­sures, and for more enlight­ened pub­lic health ini­tia­tives and indi­vid­ual lifestyles designed to decrease demen­tia risks and delay onset of symptoms.

Between 1993 and 2011, researchers fol­lowed more than 10,000 indi­vid­u­als 65 and older. Par­tic­i­pants were inter­viewed and assessed for demen­tia every three years. Read the rest of this entry »