Dr. Joshua Steinerman

Do You Mind?

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Ask your­self the tough ques­tions: Do you mind your brain? Do you know your nog­gin’? Can you claim cere­bral own­er­ship or is your men­tal a rental?

Although these ques­tions are rel­e­vant at vir­tu­al­ly all lifes­pan stages, firm answers can some­times appear incon­ceiv­able.  Unfor­tu­nate­ly with advanc­ing age, atten­tion to men­tal per­for­mance is often either aban­doned or framed in terms of per­ceived impair­ment and decline.  Now, I have pre­vi­ous­ly shared my mes­sage on mind­ing the aging brain with Sharp­Brains read­ers.  As a cog­ni­tive neu­ropsy­chi­a­trist pri­mar­i­ly inter­est­ed in lat­er-life phe­nom­e­na, I tend to stick to my area of exper­tise.  Nev­er­the­less, whether you are elder or not, I implore you to take these ideas to heart…do you mind?

Just as brain fit­ness is for all, aging is sim­i­lar­ly uni­ver­sal.  Every thought­ful indi­vid­ual rec­og­nizes the unavoid­able answer to “are you aging?”  How­ev­er, the answer to “how are you aging?” is less obvi­ous to most, and is even more obscure when con­sid­er­ing lifes­pan cog­ni­tive tra­jec­to­ries.  In fact, no con­sen­sus lex­i­con yet exists to describe the ways in which cog­ni­tion can be mod­u­lat­ed to achieve desired lifestyle or clin­i­cal goals.

In my lat­est pub­li­ca­tion on tech­nol­o­gy-enabled cog­ni­tive train­ing for healthy elders, I out­line a pro­posed lex­i­con for pos­i­tive cog­ni­tion inter­ven­tions, as well as a frame­work for clas­si­fy­ing puta­tive ben­e­fits of cog­ni­tive train­ing.  Here, I will present these con­cepts with­out regard to age, as they apply equal­ly well to all sapi­ent sapi­ens:

?      Cog­ni­tive stim­u­la­tion refers to non­tar­get­ed engage­ment that gen­er­al­ly enhances men­tal func­tion­ing.  Exam­ples might include edu­ca­tion­al endeav­ors or life review.

?      Cog­ni­tive train­ing refers to the­o­ry-dri­ven inter­ven­tion, [Read more…] about Do You Mind?

Can We Pick Your Brain re. Cognitive Assessments?

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If you could, you would. You can, but pre­fer not to know it?

More than any oth­er organ, your brain is up to you. You are what you think, not just what you eat. Here’s some food for thought:

Design your Mind

Set­ting cog­ni­tive and behav­ioral goals rais­es chal­leng­ing and wor­thy ques­tions: What do you want from your brain? Will you know it when you achieve it?

To attain the brain of our choos­ing, we must under­stand our selves and cur­rent abil­i­ties. Intro­spec­tion and curios­i­ty are help­ful if they trig­ger and sus­tain the effort to enrich the mind. How­ev­er, objec­tive infor­ma­tion which leads to informed assess­ment of brain func­tion is often lacking.

Mind your Brain

Hon­esty. Open­ness. Self-awareness.

Irrefutable virtues, but in prac­tice most peo­ple fall short. Few reg­u­lar­ly appraise their brain skills; even so, the abil­i­ty to accu­rate­ly judge one’s own men­tal per­for­mance is not guar­an­teed. I believe the first step to mind­ing the brain is shed­ding hang-ups while offer­ing and solic­it­ing frank feed­back from fam­i­ly and close con­fi­dants. In the clin­i­cal set­ting, rou­tine cog­ni­tive screen­ing and “men­tal check ups” are not cur­rent­ly prac­ticed, in part due to time con­straints and lim­it­ed util­i­ty of tra­di­tion­al paper-and-pen­cil tests. From a pub­lic health per­spec­tive, the U.S. Pre­ven­ta­tive Task Force reviewed [Read more…] about Can We Pick Your Brain re. Cog­ni­tive Assessments?

Brain Failure and Brain Fitness: A Farewell to Dementia?

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A dread­ed diag­no­sis, that dimmed and doom­ing dilem­ma. Feared, some­times fought, too often for­got­ten. It is the grayest, ghastli­est ele­phant in the room: dementia.

What is demen­tia? I, like many oth­ers who ded­i­cate their pro­fes­sion­al efforts to its study and treat­ment, have no good answer. I believe we are lost in our lex­i­con, try­ing to define a brain state so vex­ing and elu­sive it dri­ves us out of our minds.

I hope we can do bet­ter, and I am not alone. In a sen­si­tive and for­ward-look­ing edi­to­r­i­al enti­tled Demen­tia: A Word to be For­got­ten, Drs. Tra­cht­en­berg and Tro­janows­ki of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia argue that alter­nate terms are more appro­pri­ate for research, clin­i­cal, and every­day set­tings. From sci­en­tif­ic and bio­log­i­cal per­spec­tives, demen­tia is unspe­cif­ic and sub­jec­tive. With­in the walls of the physician’s office, deliv­er­ing the diag­no­sis of demen­tia can erect unin­tend­ed walls around patients and fam­i­lies; vul­ner­a­ble indi­vid­u­als, assum­ing that the “cru­el con­no­ta­tions in the lay lan­guage” actu­al­ly apply to them, are unnec­es­sar­i­ly iso­lat­ed. [Read more…] about Brain Fail­ure and Brain Fit­ness: A Farewell to Dementia?

Minding the Aging Brain

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Cog­ni­tive train­ing (the basis for what we call “brain fit­ness” these days) has a wide array of appli­ca­tions. The most recentneurons one, which is cap­tur­ing pub­lic’s imag­i­na­tion, monop­o­liz­ing media cov­er­age, and cre­at­ing cer­tain con­fu­sion, is Healthy Brain Aging. We are for­tu­nate to have Dr. Joshua Stein­er­man, one of our new Expert Con­trib­u­tors, offer today his great voice to this con­ver­sa­tion. Enjoy!

- Alvaro
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Mind­ing the Aging Brain

– By Joshua R. Stein­er­man, M.D.

Sci­en­tists, philoso­phers, artists, and experts from all fields of human endeav­or lament: it ain’t easy get­ting old­er. It? Do they refer to frailty and dis­abil­i­ty? To bod­i­ly dis­ease? To life at its essence?

It’s all in your head

The mind is not set in stone, but it is encased by bone. It’s real­ly all about the brain, the hyphen in the mind-body conun­drum. That squishy gray neu­ronal jun­gle is the inter­face between inter­nal life and envi­ron­men­tal sen­sa­tions and stim­u­la­tion. As expect­ed, the brain shows signs of aging just as a wrin­kled brow, a stooped pos­ture, or an arthrit­ic fin­ger might. The most com­mon brain changes observed in aging and in age-asso­ci­at­ed neu­ropsy­chi­atric dis­ease include:

[Read more…] about Mind­ing the Aging Brain