Much of health­care deliv­ery has tra­di­tion­ally been set-up to deal with a ‘brain­less body’; yet we con­sis­tently com­plain that we can­not change patient and con­sumer behav­iours and main­tain adher­ence to treat­ment pro­grammes. Health­care sys­tems are now recog­nis­ing the lim­its of this model and that there are major ben­e­fits to bet­ter com­pre­hend­ing and engag­ing cog­ni­tive func­tion Read the rest of this entry »

Mem­ory Loss Could Be The Fault Of Your Meds, Not Your Age (Inter­na­tional Busi­ness Times):

“Mem­ory loss isn’t always an inevitable sign of get­ting old – in some cases, com­mon med­ica­tions that seniors take to treat insom­nia, anx­i­ety, or even aller­gies could be to blame…Tannenbaum and her col­leagues recently inves­ti­gated what kinds of med­ica­tion are most likely to affect both mem­ory and con­cen­tra­tion. In a meta-analysis of 162 exper­i­ments on var­i­ous drugs, Tan­nen­baum con­cluded that the recur­rent use of sev­eral kinds of med­ica­tions can have impacts Read the rest of this entry »

We recently came across a fas­ci­nat­ing sci­en­tific study, titled Exam­in­ing cog­ni­tive func­tion across the lifes­pan using a mobile appli­ca­tion (Com­put­ers in Human Behav­ior), which stud­ied the value and lim­i­ta­tions of using an iPad app called “brain­base­line.”

Abstract: “Many stud­ies con­ducted in a lab­o­ra­tory or uni­ver­sity set­ting are lim­ited by fund­ing, per­son­nel, space, and time con­straints. In the present study, Read the rest of this entry »

‘Chemo Brain’ After Breast Can­cer Backed by Study (US News):

“Breast can­cer patients treated with chemother­apy are at risk for mild men­tal deficits known col­lec­tively as “chemo brain,” a new study finds. Researchers at the Mof­fitt Can­cer Cen­ter in Tampa, Fla., reviewed exist­ing research on brain func­tion (“cog­ni­tive” func­tion­ing) in Read the rest of this entry »

The annual well­ness visit: An oppor­tu­nity to improve rev­enue and patient care (PhysBizTech):

“Medicare recently intro­duced the Annual Well­ness Visit (AWV) to keep Medicare ben­e­fi­cia­ries healthy, or help Medicare ben­e­fi­cia­ries become health­ier, by pro­mot­ing pos­i­tive health habits and a healthy lifestyle. Unlike Read the rest of this entry »

Foot­prints to Cog­ni­tive Decline and Alzheimer’s Are Seen in Gait (The New York Times):
“The way peo­ple walk appears to speak vol­umes about the way they think, so much so that changes in an older person’s gait appear to be an early indi­ca­tor of cog­ni­tive impair­ment, includ­ing Alzheimer’s disease…Five stud­ies pre­sented at the Alzheimer’s Asso­ci­a­tion Inter­na­tional Con­fer­ence in Van­cou­ver this month pro­vide strik­ing evi­dence that when a person’s walk gets slower or becomes more vari­able or less con­trolled, his cog­ni­tive func­tion is also suffering…Asking peo­ple to simul­ta­ne­ously Read the rest of this entry »

“Within 20 years, older adults will account for almost 25% of the U.S. pop­u­la­tion. From a health­care per­spec­tive, a major con­cern with an aging pop­u­la­tion is a higher preva­lence of age-related impair­ment in cog­ni­tive func­tion. This expand­ing aging pop­u­la­tion high­lights the need to iden­tify quick, effec­tive, low-cost solu­tions to delay patho­log­i­cal cog­ni­tive decline asso­ci­ated with aging. Devel­op­ing inter­ven­tions that can pre­serve cog­ni­tive func­tion can also help to main­tain qual­ity of life and inde­pen­dence well into old age. With the help of new tech­nol­ogy, Read the rest of this entry »