Cognitive Health News Round-Up

Round-up of inter­est­ing recent news on cog­ni­tive health and fit­ness: the field is in motion.

1) Bay­crest cre­ates Cen­tre for Brain Fit­ness with $10-mil­lion Invest­ment from Ontario Gov­ern­ment (Cana­da NewsWire)

2) Cog­ni­tive tests are the best way to select med­ical stu­dents (EurekAlert)

3) High blood pres­sure hard on the aging brain (Reuters)

4) Alzheimer’s tests ben­e­fi­cial for seniors (Atlanta-Jour­nal Constitutional)

5) Demen­tia-Dread­ing Baby Boomers Spur Race to Invent Brain Games (Bloomberg)

6) Viv­i­ty Labs launch­es Fit Brains brain-train­ing game site (VentureBeat) 

7) Depres­sion and Alzheimer’s (NHS Choices)

For select­ed quotes and comments, 

1) Bay­crest cre­ates Cen­tre for Brain Fit­ness with $10-mil­lion Invest­ment from Ontario Gov­ern­ment (Cana­da NewsWire)

- “Today the Ontario Gov­ern­ment took a large step in this direc­tion by
announc­ing it is invest­ing $10 mil­lion dol­lars to cre­ate the Cen­tre for Brain
Fit­ness at Baycrest.”

- “Bay­crest will part­ner with the Toron­to-based MaRS Ven­ture Group to
devel­op and mar­ket sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-proven prod­ucts for the clin­ic, workplace
and home environments.”
— “Prod­ucts in devel­op­ment over the next 10 years will include cognitive
assess­ment soft­ware (in a portable com­put­er tablet) that allows clin­i­cians to
mea­sure in a sim­ple and rapid man­ner mem­o­ry and pro­cess­ing in peo­ple who have had a stroke, may have Alzheimer’s or oth­er mem­o­ry chal­lenges; brain fitness
prod­ucts to help healthy aging adults (ages 45–75) main­tain their cognitive
func­tions, plus an addi­tion­al prod­uct suite for care­givers to provide
cog­ni­tive reha­bil­i­ta­tion to peo­ple with mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment and dementia
who live in long-term care facil­i­ties and retire­ment homes; exec­u­tive training
pro­gram for cor­po­ra­tions wish­ing to help their aging employ­ees improve
cog­ni­tive func­tions to remain pro­duc­tive; and an inter­net-based outreach
pro­gram to sup­port peo­ple car­ing for loved ones with mild to medi­um cognitive
impairment.”
Com­ments: Fas­ci­nat­ing. And very well timed.

 

2) Cog­ni­tive tests are the best way to select med­ical stu­dents (EurekAlert)

- “Cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty tests are the best way for med­ical schools to select their entrants, rather than inter­views and psy­cho­log­i­cal tests, says an edi­to­r­i­al in this week’s BMJ. (Note: British Med­ical Journal)”

- “Accord­ing to the authors, doc­tors should have three broad attributes—cognitive abil­i­ty, human­i­ty, and dili­gence. While it would be desir­able to screen poten­tial doc­tors for all these attrib­ut­es, the evi­dence sug­gests that only cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty can be assessed with rea­son­able accu­ra­cy in the con­text of mass selection.”

- “The authors there­fore sug­gest that tests of cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty are the best way to select med­ical stu­dents because the process­es they test are sim­i­lar to those used in clin­i­cal practice—the appli­ca­tion of knowl­edge to a problem.’

Com­ment: what spe­cif­ic mix of cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties are we talk­ing about? for what spe­cif­ic jobs? there is no sin­gle over­ar­ch­ing “cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty”. Hav­ing said that, the con­cept is appealling.

3) High blood pres­sure hard on the aging brain (Reuters)

- “Opti­mal con­trol of blood pres­sure may be ben­e­fi­cial in atten­u­at­ing the risk of cog­ni­tive decline as the pop­u­la­tion ages,” they conclude.

Com­ment: the study talks about “asso­ci­a­tions”. Now, which is the egg and which the chick­en? can it be that per­sons suf­fer­ing cog­ni­tive decline on, for exam­ple, self-reg­u­la­tion or exec­u­tive skills, can’t man­age their diet and lifestyle as well there­by con­tribut­ing to blood pres­sure problems?

4) Alzheimer’s tests ben­e­fi­cial for seniors (Atlanta-Jour­nal Constitutional)

- “Solomon, clin­i­cal direc­tor of the Mem­o­ry Clin­ic in Burling­ton, Vt. “But senil­i­ty and cog­ni­tive deficits are not typ­i­cal of the aging process. They sig­nal a dis­ease process.”

- “Doc­tors argue that old­er peo­ple need to think of the func­tion of their mind as they would the con­di­tion of their heart or the sta­bil­i­ty of their blood pressure”

Com­ment: could­n’t agree more with these state­ments. We pre­dict we will start to see main­stream, good, inex­pen­sive base­line ass­es­ments of cog­ni­tive func­tion (not clin­i­cal diagnosis) in a few years.

5) Demen­tia-Dread­ing Baby Boomers Spur Race to Invent Brain Games (Bloomberg)

- “Insur­ance com­pa­nies includ­ing Humana Inc., the sec­ond- largest sell­er of Medicare drug plans, are encour­ag­ing pol­i­cy­hold­ers to use the games. Treat­ing Alzheimer’s and demen­tia patients in 2005 cost the U.S. gov­ern­men­t’s Medicare and Med­ic­aid health pro­grams $112 bil­lion, a total that will reach $184 bil­lion by 2015, accord­ing to the Alzheimer’s Association.”

- “In Merzenich’s view, the only way to rein­vig­o­rate the brain is through con­tin­ued learn­ing. That stim­u­lates neu­rons, the nerve cells that car­ry mes­sages in the brain, to fire and form new branch­es. Solv­ing cross­word puz­zles or play­ing bridge keeps the mind active but does­n’t make it per­form new tasks, he says.”

Com­ment: I am quot­ed sev­er­al times in the arti­cle, which is over­all pret­ty good. But the reporter and I did talk about many oth­er areas not mentioned‑I do find it fas­ci­nat­ing to observe that, where­as the research for cog­ni­tive train­ing is much more sol­id in oth­er areas, healthy aging and dementia is get­ting all the media atten­tion now.

6) Viv­i­ty Labs launch­es Fit Brains brain-train­ing game site (VentureBeat) 

- “We call it guilt-free gaming,” said Cole, whose com­pa­ny (Note: Fit­Brains) recent­ly raised $1 mil­lion in fund­ing from undis­closed angels. “We’ll go after the casu­al games audi­ence that wants to keep their minds sharp.”

Com­ment: how will the increas­ing num­ber of “brain train­ing” web­sites dif­fer­en­ti­ate themselves?

7) Depres­sion and Alzheimer’s (NHS Choices)

- “This study chal­lenges the the­o­ry that depres­sion and demen­tia are caused by anoth­er fac­tor. It there­fore adds weight to, but does not prove, the the­o­ry that depres­sion is a risk fac­tor for demen­tia. How­ev­er, this study has short­com­ings, and fur­ther research that is free of these should pro­vide a clear­er pic­ture. Until more is known, depres­sion suf­fer­ers should not be over­ly wor­ried that they will devel­op dementia.”

Com­ment: I guess that last sen­tence offers good news…