We were very glad this morn­ing to find this cus­tomer review in Amazon.com, dis­cussing our new book:

“My fam­ily has a his­tory of demen­tia and Alzheimer’s, so my wife and I are always on the look­out for new and help­ful infor­ma­tion about keep­ing our brains strong as we age. We’ve read more than a few and I haven’t writ­ten reviews of any of them. I wanted to share a bit about why I did like this book and what prompted me to take the time to write a review. I found this book to be burst­ing with use­ful infor­ma­tion. Read the rest of this entry »

Time for Sharp­Brains’ May 2013 e-newsletter, which fea­tures a vari­ety of arti­cles offer­ing a more opti­mistic and evidence-based approach to brain and men­tal health than cur­rent practices.

First of all, let us high­light that Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can just pub­lished an excel­lent review of our new book. The author sums it up by say­ing that “…I wish I had read this awe­some guide when I was much younger…I find the emerg­ing field of neu­ro­plas­tic­ity immensely excit­ing, and guides like this one are both hope­ful and rea­son­able.” As a reader points out, the word “awe­some” does not appear often in science-oriented publications…so we are espe­cially proud to see the book merit such treatment.

New think­ing:

• Founder of Sharp­Brains talks about brain health
• Six tips to build resilience and pre­vent brain-damaging stress
• Time to revamp psy­chi­a­try and men­tal health in light of mod­ern neuroscience?
• A new type of cog­ni­tive sci­ence think tank
• Why invest­ment in brain research is an intel­li­gent investment

New sci­ence:

• White House BRAIN Ini­tia­tive is a nice start, but too small and unfocused
• Demen­tia costs more than heart dis­ease, and can­cer. And it will balloon.
• Chal­leng­ing med­ical dogma: Men­tal exer­cise vs drugs, sup­ple­ments and phys­i­cal exer­cise to pre­vent cog­ni­tive decline
• What is the com­bined effect of phys­i­cal and men­tal training?
• Mon­i­tor­ing stress-related use of antipsy­chotic drugs in the military

New tools:

• Does brain train­ing work? Yes, if it meets these 5 conditions
• Cog­ni­tive enhance­ment in the future: elec­tric brain stim­u­la­tion plus cog­ni­tive training?
• The future of intu­itive tech­nol­ogy and neu­rocog­ni­tive care
• Train your brain with tar­geted videogames, not with cross­word puzzles
• Great Kirkus Review of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness (“A stim­u­lat­ing, chal­leng­ing resource, full of solid infor­ma­tion and prac­ti­cal tips for improv­ing brain health.”)

That’s it for now. Have a stim­u­lat­ing June!

Trans­form­ing Diag­no­sis (arti­cle by Thomas Insel, Direc­tor of the NIMH): “In a few weeks, the Amer­i­can Psy­chi­atric Asso­ci­a­tion will release its new edi­tion of the Diag­nos­tic and Sta­tis­ti­cal Man­ual of Men­tal Dis­or­ders (DSM-5)…While DSM has been described as a “Bible” for the field, it is, at best, a dic­tio­nary, cre­at­ing Read the rest of this entry »

Demen­tia Care Cost Is Pro­jected to Dou­ble by 2040 (The New York Times):

“The most rig­or­ous study to date of how much it costs to care for Amer­i­cans with demen­tia found that the finan­cial bur­den is at least as high as that of heart dis­ease or can­cer, and is prob­a­bly higher. And both the costs and the num­ber of peo­ple with demen­tia will more than dou­ble within 30 years, sky­rock­et­ing at a rate that rarely occurs with a chronic disease…The RAND results show that nearly 15 per­cent of peo­ple aged 71 or older, about 3.8 mil­lion peo­ple, have demen­tia. By 2040, the authors said, that num­ber will bal­loon Read the rest of this entry »

Drugs for Early-Stage Alzheimer’s (good New York Times editorial):

“The Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion has pro­posed low­er­ing the bar for approv­ing drugs to treat peo­ple at the ear­li­est stages of Alzheimer’s dis­ease, before they have devel­oped any seri­ous impair­ment or overt demen­tia. The goal is com­mend­able — to find ways to pre­vent or slow the pro­gres­sion of this ter­ri­ble dis­ease before it can rob peo­ple of their men­tal capac­i­ties. But the pro­posal raises trou­bling ques­tions as to whether the agency would end up approv­ing drugs that pro­vide lit­tle or no clin­i­cal ben­e­fit yet 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 »

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 »