Brain Health And Well­ness Inno­va­tion Dri­ves New Dig­i­tal Health Mar­ket, Social Change (Young Upstarts):

“Tech­nol­ogy has com­pletely changed the prac­tice of med­i­cine, pro­vid­ing incred­i­ble imag­ing tech­niques and data that now play a key role in treat­ing injuries and ill­nesses. Sophis­ti­cated tools give researchers amaz­ing new insights that advance our under­stand­ing of human anatomy, includ­ing the brain. Stan­dard treat­ments for vir­tu­ally every seri­ous injury and ill­ness have been utterly trans­formed over the past 50 years due to tech­ni­cal advances. How­ever, these advances have added greatly to the cost of research and treat­ment, and that’s par­tic­u­larly true when it comes to the brain… One solu­tion to this chal­lenge lies in tech­nol­ogy that is already glob­ally per­va­sive and rel­a­tively inex­pen­sive to deploy: the Inter­net. Read arti­cle »

Imag­ine a future where dia­betes is mon­i­tored and man­aged, not with fin­ger prick blood tests and reg­u­lar insulin injec­tions, but with a small sen­sor implanted under the skin that mon­i­tors blood sugar lev­els, releases insulin as needed and com­mu­ni­cates the details to a smart phone. Wel­come to the sub­atomic world of nan­otech­nol­ogy. With devel­op­ments in the field, it is a future that we could be liv­ing in not too far from now. As I heard dur­ing my recent con­ver­sa­tion with Dr Sonia Con­tera, Co– Direc­tor of the Oxford Mar­tin Pro­gramme on Nan­otech­nol­ogy, biosen­sors are one of the most promis­ing med­ical appli­ca­tions of nan­otech­nol­ogy, and likely to be one of the first to be realised. Read the rest of this entry »

Study offers more proof for the power of placebo, say UCLA researchers (UCLA press release):
– “While the rela­tion­ship between prior treat­ment and the brain’s response to sub­se­quent treat­ment is unknown, a new study by UCLA researchers sug­gests that how the brain responds to anti­de­pres­sant med­ica­tion may be influ­enced by its remem­ber­ing of past anti­de­pres­sant expo­sure.” Read the rest of this entry »

Time for Sharp­Brains’ Jan­u­ary 2012 eNewslet­ter, fea­tur­ing in this occa­sion mul­ti­ple thought-provoking per­spec­tives on how emerg­ing neu­ro­science can and should make us rethink pre­vail­ing prac­tices in edu­ca­tion, healthy aging and pre­ven­tive medicine.

Fea­tured Perspectives:

• The Future of Pre­ven­tive Brain Med­i­cine: Break­ing Down the Cog­ni­tion & Alzheimer’s Dis­ease Alpha­bet Soup, by Dr. Dharma Singh Khalsa
• When 1 + 1 = 5: Dyscal­cu­lia and Work­ing Mem­ory, by Dr. Tracy Alloway
• New Review of Neu­ro­feed­back Treat­ment for ADHD — Cur­rent State of the Sci­ence, by Dr. David Rabiner
• The Busi­ness and Ethics of the Brain Fit­ness Boom, by Alvaro Fernandez
• (How to con­tribute arti­cles like these to SharpBrains.com)

New Research: 

• Brain func­tion can start declin­ing as early as age 45
• Edu­ca­tion for Men­tal Fit­ness: “A Sharper Mind, Mid­dle Age and Beyond”
• Life­long cog­ni­tive exer­cise may ward off Alzheimer’s pro­tein beta amyloid
• Cog­ni­tive Train­ing & Brain Teasers Can Increase Open­ness Among Older Adults
• Cog­ni­tive Train­ing in Mild Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment (MCI)
• Does Nin­tendo Brain Age work as a brain train­ing game?
• Brain Injury Care: Treat­ment and Reim­burse­ment Challenges

Resources:

• The Ten Habits of a Sharp Brain
• Brain Teasers and Games, for Kids and Adults
• Upcom­ing Talk & Book Sign­ing in Wash­ing­ton, DC

Have a great month of February.

As the pres­i­dent and med­ical direc­tor of the Alzheimer’s Research and Pre­ven­tion Foun­da­tion (ARPF), it’s my job to stay on top of advances in the field of Alzheimer’s research. Recently, a num­ber of arti­cles in the med­ical lit­er­a­ture have caught my atten­tion. They are focused on a par­tic­u­lar ques­tion that con­cerns most Baby Boomers like me: “Is mem­ory loss just a nor­mal part of aging?” Read the rest of this entry »

Spon­sored Ad (How to Adver­tise on SharpBrains.com)

Time for our monthly eNewslet­ter track­ing recent news and devel­op­ments on how the neu­ro­science of cog­ni­tion and emo­tions can inform edu­ca­tion and health across the lifes­pan. Let us try to be as con­cise as pos­si­ble, so you can spend as much time as pos­si­ble con­nect­ing with your Loved Ones instead of with the World Wide Web.

• Your Brain: Capa­ble of Great­ness, Hard-wired for Survival
• How Phys­i­cal Exer­cise Ben­e­fits the Brain
• Brain changes seen in cab­bies who take ‘The Knowledge’
• How Cul­tural Evo­lu­tion Out­paces Nat­ural Evolution
• Cog­ni­tive Test­ing Pro­gram Fails Sol­diers, Leav­ing Brain Injuries Undetected
• Cog­ni­tive Behav­iour Ther­apy Helps Adults with ADHD
• Check­list to Eval­u­ate Brain Train­ing and Brain Health Claims
• Could study­ing the placebo effect change the way we think about medicine?
• New Online Course: How to Be Your Own Brain Fit­ness Coach in 2012
• The Sharp­Brains Guide: Pre­ven­tive Med­i­cine Best­seller in Ama­zon Kin­dle Store
• Offi­cial selec­tion  by AARP of Best Books on Brain Fitness
• Top 10 Quotes on Life­long Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity and Neurogenesis
• Invi­ta­tion for Sharp­Brains Sum­mit Par­tic­i­pants to Com­ment on Meet­ing Report

Wish­ing you a won­der­ful end of 2011 and a happy and suc­cess­ful 2012!

PS: thirty-nine peo­ple have reg­is­tered since this past Tues­day to par­tic­i­pate in the upcom­ing Online Course: How to Be Your Own Brain Fit­ness Coach in 2012. Please remem­ber we will only be able to acco­mo­date the first two hun­dred reg­is­trants, so please take a look soon to see if you are inter­ested in joining!

The Power of Noth­ing: Could study­ing the placebo effect change the way we think about med­i­cine? (The New Yorker):

“For years, Ted Kaptchuk per­formed acupunc­ture at a tiny clinic in Cam­bridge, a few miles from his cur­rent office, at the Har­vard Med­ical School. He opened for busi­ness in 1976, hav­ing just returned from Asia, where he had spent four years hon­ing his craft. Not long after he arrived in Boston, he treated an Armen­ian woman for chronic bron­chi­tis. A few weeks later, the woman returned with her hus­band and told Kaptchuk that he had “cured” her.” Read the rest of this entry »