Cognitive Training & Brain Teasers Can Increase Openness Among Older Adults

By SharpBrains | January 20, 2012

Brain Teasers Make Seniors More Open to New Ven­tures (med­page today): — ” A cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­gram that includ­ed Sudoku and cross­word puz­zles made old­er adults more open to new expe­ri­ences, accord­ing to a pre­lim­i­nary study.” — “Old­er adults under­go changes in per­son­al­i­ty, includ­ing shifts in open­ness or will­ing­ness to seek out new and cog­ni­tive­ly chal­leng­ing experiences.…

Read More

February Update: Retooling Brain Health for the 21st Century

By SharpBrains | February 28, 2011

Wel­come to the Feb­ru­ary edi­tion of Sharp­Brains month­ly eNewslet­ter: First Report of the Coun­cil on the Age­ing Soci­ety: Glob­al Pol­i­cy jour­nal pub­lish­es the full Pol­i­cy Prin­ci­ples and call to action out­lined by the Glob­al Agen­da Coun­cil on the Age­ing Soci­ety, an ini­tia­tive run by the World Eco­nomic Forum which our CEO Alvaro Fer­nan­dez was hon­ored to…

Read More

Do Crossword Puzzles Help to Counteract the Aging Process? If so, Which Ones and How?

By Nick Almond | February 4, 2011 |

Recent­ly there has been an ongo­ing debate as to whether attempt­ing cross­words reg­u­lar­ly can stave off cog­ni­tive decline, which is the hall­mark of healthy aging and demen­tia. As with many areas of psy­chol­o­gy the answer to this ques­tion may not be as clear-cut as one would hope. Before con­sid­er­ing the evi­dence for whether cross­word participation…

Read More

Education AND Lifelong Cognitive Activities build Cognitive Reserve and Delay Memory Loss

By Dr. Pascale Michelon | August 25, 2009

In a recent­ly pub­lished sci­en­tif­ic study (see Hall C, et al “Cog­ni­tive activ­i­ties delay onset of mem­o­ry decline in per­sons who devel­op demen­tia” Neu­rol­o­gy 2009; 73: 356–361), Hall and col­leagues exam­ined how edu­ca­tion and stim­u­lat­ing activ­i­ties may inter­act to con­tribute to cog­ni­tive reserve. The study involved 488 ini­tial­ly healthy peo­ple, aver­age age 79, who enrolled…

Read More

Cars don’t work because they don’t fly

By Alvaro Fernandez | February 9, 2009

Study Ques­tions Effec­tive­ness Of $80 Mil­lion Per Year ‘Brain Exer­cise Prod­ucts Indus­try for Elder­ly (Sci­ence Dai­ly) — “There is much research on the ben­e­fits of cog­ni­tive reha­bil­i­ta­tion strate­gies among elder­ly who already expe­ri­ence mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment (MCI) or Alzheimer’s dis­ease, as well as on the pos­i­tive impact of phys­i­cal exer­cise. The researchers, how­ev­er, want­ed to evaluate…

Read More