Promoting Healthy, Meaningful Aging Through Social Involvement: Building an Experience Corps

By Dana Foundation | August 30, 2011

(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…

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Report: Boomers’ Ability to Make Financial Decisions Often Declines With Age

By SharpBrains | July 26, 2011

(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…

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Longevity, Conscientiousness and Work

By Alvaro Fernandez | April 19, 2011 |

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…

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When early retirement equals mental retirement and memory decline

By Dr. Pascale Michelon | October 14, 2010 |

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.…

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Brain News: Lifelong Learning for Cognitive Health

By Alvaro Fernandez | March 30, 2009

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…

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Elderhostel’s Marty Knowlton and Lifelong Learning

By Alvaro Fernandez | March 22, 2009

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…

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