(Editor’s note: Path­ways respon­si­ble for higher-order think­ing in the pre­frontal cor­tex (PFC), or exec­u­tive cen­ter of the brain, remain vul­ner­a­ble through­out life—during crit­i­cal early-life devel­op­men­tal win­dows, when the PFC fully matures in the early 20s, and finally from declines asso­ci­ated with old age. At all ages, phys­i­cal activ­ity and PFC-navigated social con­nec­tions are essen­tial com­po­nents to main­tain­ing brain health. The Expe­ri­ence Corps, a community-based social-engagement pro­gram, part­ners seniors with local schools to pro­mote purpose-driven involve­ment. Par­tic­i­pat­ing seniors have exhib­ited imme­di­ate short-term gains in brain regions vul­ner­a­ble to aging, such as the PFC, indi­cat­ing that peo­ple with the most to lose have the most to gain from envi­ron­men­tal enrichment.)

Over the last decade, sci­en­tists made two key dis­cov­er­ies that reframed our under­stand­ing of the adult brain’s poten­tial to ben­e­fit from life­long envi­ron­men­tal enrich­ment. First, they learned that the adult brain remains plas­tic; it can gen­er­ate new neu­rons in response to phys­i­cal activ­ity and new expe­ri­ences. Sec­ond, they con­firmed the impor­tance of social con­nect­ed­ness to late-life cog­ni­tive, psy­cho­log­i­cal, and phys­i­cal health. The inte­gra­tion of these find­ings with our under­stand­ing of indi­vid­u­als’ devel­op­men­tal needs through­out life under­scores the impor­tance of the “social brain.” The pre­frontal cor­tex (PFC) is par­tic­u­larly inte­gral to nav­i­gat­ing com­plex social behav­iors and hier­ar­chies over the life course. Read the rest of this entry »

(Editor’s Note: this timely new report illus­trates the need for inno­v­a­tive brain fit­ness inter­ven­tions focused on main­tain­ing if not enhanc­ing tar­geted cog­ni­tive func­tion­al­ity, such as dri­ving safety or finan­cial decision-making, lever­ag­ing life­long neu­ro­plas­tic­ity and cog­ni­tive reserve. What the report presents as inex­orable, some­what genet­i­cally pre-programmed decline, it is not.)

BMO Retire­ment Insti­tute Report: Boomers’ Abil­ity to Make Finan­cial Deci­sions Often Declines With Age (Mar­ket Watch):

- “The BMO Retire­ment Insti­tute released a report today which raises aware­ness of the poten­tial impact on aging Cana­di­ans of declin­ing cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties — often caused by Alzheimer’s dis­ease and other forms of demen­tia — and describes how this decline can affect their abil­ity to make finan­cial deci­sions.” Read the rest of this entry »

There’s an excel­lent arti­cle in the New York Times (Eighty Years Along, a Longevity Study Still Has Ground to Cover) about a very wor­thy new book based on a fas­ci­nat­ing series of research stud­ies: The Longevity Project: Sur­pris­ing Dis­cov­er­ies for Health and Long Life from the Land­mark Eight-Decade Study is the book where UC-Riverside researchers Howard Fried­man and Leslie Mar­tin draw key lessons from an eight-decade-long Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity Ter­man study of 1,500 people.

Quotes from the article:

- Many assume biol­ogy is the crit­i­cal fac­tor in longevity. If your par­ents lived to be 85, you prob­a­bly will, too. Not so, Dr. Fried­man said. Read the rest of this entry »

The New-York Times reports on the study pub­lished a few days ago in the Jour­nal of Eco­nomic Per­spec­tives, “Men­tal retirement”:

… Data from the United States, Eng­land and 11 other Euro­pean coun­tries sug­gest that the ear­lier peo­ple retire, the more quickly their mem­o­ries decline.

… what aspect of work is doing that, Dr. Suz­man said. “Is it the social engage­ment and inter­ac­tion or the cog­ni­tive com­po­nent of work, or is it the aer­o­bic com­po­nent of work?” he asked. “Or is it the absence of what hap­pens when you retire, which could be increased TV watching?”

Com­ments: This new study is another piece of evi­dence accu­mu­lat­ing with more and more oth­ers sug­gest­ing that a brain healthy life-style requires con­stant cog­ni­tive chal­lenge to help main­tain high-level cog­ni­tive func­tions. Whether it is speak­ing mul­ti­ple lan­guages, phys­i­cally exer­cis­ing or stay­ing men­tally active, our every­day life can pos­i­tively impact our brain health.  Some­thing to keep in mind after retirement…and to even retire the word “retirement”!

The results are also intrigu­ing because work­ing com­bines mul­ti­ple aspects of a brain-healthy lifestyle (social engage­ment, men­tal stim­u­la­tion) with aspects not so good for the brain (stress, absence of phys­i­cal exer­cise in some cases). How­ever, it seems that, over­all, the good aspects of work­ing take over the bad ones as far as mem­ory func­tions are concerned.

Here you have the March edi­tion of our monthly newslet­ter cov­er­ing cog­ni­tive health and brain fit­ness top­ics. Please remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, using the box at the top of this page. I know I am biased — but do believe this Newslet­ter issue might well be our best so far. I hope you find the time to enjoy it!

Bird’s Eye View

Brain Fit­ness Sur­vey: Over 2,000 thought­ful responses to our Jan­u­ary sur­vey (Thank You!) rein­force the need for pub­lic aware­ness ini­tia­tives and qual­ity infor­ma­tion to help eval­u­ate and nav­i­gate lifestyle and prod­uct claims, as well as the need for more research, an expanded health­care cul­ture, as more. Given this con­text, we are pub­lish­ing The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness in May 2009, a book with 18 Inter­views with Sci­en­tists, Prac­ti­cal Advice, and Prod­uct Reviews, in addi­tion to our annual mar­ket report for pro­fes­sion­als and exec­u­tives (to be pub­lished in April). If you have ideas to help us pro­mote the book, please reply to this email and let us know!

Life­long Learning

A per­son who helped rein­vent “aging”, “retire­ment” and “learn­ing”, con­tribut­ing to the cog­ni­tive health of mil­lions of indi­vid­u­als as a result:

Mar­tin P. ‘Marty’ Knowl­ton dies at 88; co-founder of Elder­hos­tel (Los Ange­les Times)

- “Mar­tin P. “Marty” Knowl­ton, a world trav­eler who fought ageism by co-founding Elder­hos­tel, a pro­gram that pio­neered learn­ing vaca­tions for mature adults, has died. He was 88.”

- “Knowl­ton died Thurs­day of nat­ural causes at a nurs­ing home in Ven­tura, said David Bianco, who started Elder­hos­tel with his friend in 1975.”

- “When he was about 50, Knowl­ton became highly annoyed by two things: the pre­vail­ing wis­dom that “as you got older, your mind auto­mat­i­cally began to fail” and the gov­ern­ment noti­fy­ing him that “old age begins at 55,” he told the Ven­tura County Star in 2000.”

The arti­cle: Here

Elder­hos­tel web­site: Here

Increased longevity has gen­er­ated many ques­tions and much inter­est in healthy aging and retire­ment lifestyles over the recent decades. As Amer­i­cans become edu­cated regard­ing lifestyle choices that con­tribute to both phys­i­cal and men­tal health, the def­i­n­i­tion of healthy aging has expanded to include brain health.

The notion of retire­ment as a time of with­drawal from soci­ety, to be spent on rest and repose reflected the think­ing of a pre­vi­ous era when peo­ple expected shorter life spans. It is now known that the human brain ben­e­fits from envi­ron­ments rich in novel and com­plex stim­uli, and that by actively par­tic­i­pat­ing in soci­ety and tak­ing on per­son­ally rel­e­vant roles, peo­ple find mean­ing and pur­pose, which gives them a rea­son to get up in the morn­ing and pur­sue new challenges.

This year, the MetLife Mature Mar­ket Insti­tute pub­lished a research study titled Dis­cov­er­ing What Mat­ters: Bal­anc­ing Money, Med­i­cine and Mean­ing. The study explored how peo­ple rebal­ance their pri­or­i­ties over time and jug­gle var­i­ous com­pet­ing aspects of life includ­ing money, med­i­cine (a metaphor for health) and mean­ing, in order to live the Good Life.  Hav­ing pur­pose was found to Read the rest of this entry »