The FDA clears two computerized cognitive tests to assist in medical evaluations following brain injury or concussion

FDA allows mar­ket­ing of first-of-kind com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive tests to help assess cog­ni­tive skills after a head injury (FDA news release): “The U.S. Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion today per­mit­ted mar­ket­ing of two new devices to assess a patient’s cog­ni­tive func­tion imme­di­ate­ly after a sus­pect­ed brain injury or con­cus­sion. The Imme­di­ate Post-Con­­cus­­sion Assess­ment and Cog­ni­tive Test­ing (ImPACT)…

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Brain Training News Digest

Here is a news digest on brain train­ing to start your stim­u­lat­ing New Year: Brain train­ing games: Do they work? This piece explores the world of com­put­er­ized brain train­ing soft­ware: Who uses them? Are they worth the expense? You can also check out Sharp­brains Pro­gram Eval­u­a­tion check­list to learn about the 10 ques­tions to ask when…

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Update: Does Cognitive Training Work?

Here you have the Feb­ru­ary edi­tion of our month­ly newslet­ter cov­er­ing cog­ni­tive health and brain fit­ness top­ics. Please remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, sim­ply by sub­mit­ting your email at the top of this page. Cog­ni­tive train­ing (or struc­tured men­tal exer­cise) def­i­nite­ly seems to work — as long as we define…

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Brain Training: It Works, and It Doesn’t Work

The IMPACT study which we report­ed on in Decem­ber 2007, fund­ed by Posit Sci­ence, con­duct­ed by the Mayo Clin­ic and USC Davis, has just announced pub­li­ca­tion at the Jour­nal of the Amer­i­can Geri­atrics Soci­ety. Ref­er­ence: — Smith et al. A Cog­ni­tive Train­ing Pro­gram Designed Based on Prin­ci­ples of Brain Plas­tic­i­ty: Results from the Improve­ment in…

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Neurocognitive assessments and sports concussions

Con­cus­sion effect ‘spans decades’ (BBC) — “Peo­ple con­cussed in their youth show sub­tle signs of men­tal and phys­i­cal prob­lems even more than 30 years lat­er, say Cana­di­an researchers.” — “Dr Louis de Beau­mont, who led the study, said: “This study shows that the effects of sports con­cus­sions in ear­ly adult­hood per­sist beyond 30 years post-concussion,…

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