Tracking Health and Wellness Applications of Brain Science

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Non-invasive neurotechnology reaches senior housing via ASHA-NeuroVigil innovative partnership

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Senior Liv­ing Sees Huge Poten­tial in Res­i­dent Brain Data (Senior Hous­ing News):

“The Amer­i­can Senior Hous­ing Asso­ci­a­tion (ASHA) has announced a new part­ner­ship that aims to use neu­ro­science to deter­mine whether senior liv­ing com­mu­ni­ties are ben­e­fit­ing their res­i­dents. As part of the ini­tia­tive, La Jol­la, Cal­i­for­nia-based Neu­roVig­il will mon­i­tor [Read more…] about Non-inva­sive neu­rotech­nol­o­gy reach­es senior hous­ing via ASHA-Neu­roVig­il inno­v­a­tive part­ner­ship

Newborn neurons in the adult brain are critical for learning and memory

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New­born Neu­rons — Even in the Adult Aging Brain — Are Crit­i­cal for Mem­o­ry (Sci­ence Dai­ly):

“New­ly gen­er­at­ed, or new­born neu­rons in the adult hip­pocam­pus are crit­i­cal for mem­o­ry retrieval, accord­ing to a study led by Stony Brook Uni­ver­si­ty researchers…Previous research… has demon­strat­ed that new­born neu­rons form con­nec­tions with exist­ing neu­rons [Read more…] about New­born neu­rons in the adult brain are crit­i­cal for learn­ing and mem­o­ry

New Brain Health Series: The Child, Adolescent, Adult and Aging Brain

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Peo­ple of all ages read SharpBrains.com, so we are prepar­ing a series of arti­cles on Brain Health across the Lifes­pan.

The series will include 4 parts:

  • The Child Brain, pub­lished in Novem­ber 2010
  • The Ado­les­cent Brain, in Decem­ber 2010
  • The Adult Brain, in Jan­u­ary 2011
  • The Aging Brain, in Feb­ru­ary 2011

    • Each part will :

    • Include sur­pris­ing facts on how the brain works
    • Debunk com­mons myths about cog­ni­tion and brain health
    • Link to resources such as books and doc­u­men­taries.

    If you want to read these arti­cles as we pub­lish them via SharpBrains.com, you can either fol­low us in Face­book and Twit­ter or, if you have not done so already, sub­scribe to our month­ly update (eNewslet­ter).

    Tell your friends and col­leagues about the series!

    Update: Let’s move, slow down, innovate, think and play

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    You have heard that phys­i­cal exer­cise is good for the brain. How much exer­cise are we talk­ing about? Can the ben­e­fits be seen both for chil­dren and adults? In Fit­ter bod­ies = fit­ter brains. True at all ages? Dr. Pas­cale Mich­e­lon answers these ques­tions for you, based on lat­est sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies.

    We need fun ways to get out the couch more and exer­cise both phys­i­cal­ly and cog­ni­tive­ly. What about set­ting up com­mu­ni­ty-based adult play­grounds, such as this one in Bei­jing?

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    New Brain Health Series

    Peo­ple of all ages read SharpBrains.com and this month­ly update, so we are prepar­ing a series of arti­cles on Brain Health across the Lifes­pan. The series will include 4 parts:

  • The Child Brain, pub­lished in Novem­ber 2010
  • The Ado­les­cent Brain, in Decem­ber 2010
  • The Adult Brain, in Jan­u­ary 2011
  • The Aging Brain, in Feb­ru­ary 2011

    • Each part will include sur­pris­ing facts on how the brain works, debunk com­mons myths about cog­ni­tion and brain health, and link to resources such as books and doc­u­men­taries. If you want to read these arti­cles as we pub­lish them via SharpBrains.com, you can fol­low us in Face­book and Twit­ter. Tell your friends and col­leagues about the series!

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    Let’s Move

    Walk­ing increas­es Brain Vol­ume: A recent neu­ro-imag­ing study shows that walk­ing reg­u­larly can increase brain vol­ume and reduce the risks of devel­op­ing cog­ni­tive impair­ment.

    Move to anoth­er Coun­try, to anoth­er Occu­pa­tion: A cou­ple recent stud­ies rein­force the Cog­ni­tive Reserve frame­work that sug­gests we can pro­tect our brains by speak­ing more than one lan­guage and by not retir­ing ear­ly.

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    Let’s Slow Down

    Take that Nap — It May Boost Your Learn­ing Capac­i­ty: Scott Bar­ry Kauf­man tells us why sleep is good for the brain. It turns out that sleep is tied to a bet­ter immune sys­tem, meta­bolic con­trol, mem­ory, learn­ing, cre­ativ­i­ty and emo­tional func­tion­ing.

    Boost your Atten­tion with Med­i­ta­tion: Anoth­er way to slow down is to med­i­tate. Through sum­maries of stud­ies and an inter­view with Dr. New­berg, we dis­cuss how med­i­ta­tion can improve your con­cen­tra­tion skills.

    Train your Brain to Focus on Pos­i­tive Expe­ri­ences: In this arti­cle by the Greater Good Mag­a­zine, Rick Han­son explains the “neg­a­tiv­i­ty bias” of the brain and what steps we can take to rewire our brains for last­ing hap­pi­ness.

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    Let’s Innovate

    If much health care is actu­al­ly evi­dence-free, what type of evi­dence and tools do we need to make real-world progress?: build­ing on a recent OpEd by Peter Orszag, Alvaro Fer­nan­dez asks us to assess the val­ue and lim­i­ta­tions of inno­v­a­tive brain health tools based on how they seem to per­form com­pared to exist­ing alter­na­tives- not com­pared to Pla­ton­ic research ideals. This basic con­cept serves as the foun­da­tion of the new Sharp­Brains Coun­cil for Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion.

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    Let’s Think

    Cog­ni­tive stim­u­la­tion helps Alzheimer’s patients: Anoth­er sci­en­tif­ic review shows that pro­grams focus­ing on glob­al cog­ni­tive stim­u­la­tion could delay the onset of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease by 5 years. The authors con­clude that efforts to devel­op and imple­ment cog­ni­tive-based inter­ven­tion for the treat­ment of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease must be pur­sued.

    The Naked Lady Who Stood on Her Head: In his new book, Dr. Gary Small describes how the onset of brain health prob­lems may resem­ble a brain fog, mak­ing the role of the physi­cian and the care­giv­er par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant.

    Have you read The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness, by Alvaro Fer­nan­dez and Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg?: if so, please take 5 min­utes to answer this brief sur­vey. Your feed­back will ensure that future edi­tions are even more rel­e­vant and valu­able. If you haven’t read it yet, you can learn more and order here.

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    Let’s Play: Top 10 Illusions

    Are you ready to expe­ri­ence our selec­tion of Visu­al Illu­sions? See if you can trust your brain…enjoy these Top 10 Visu­al Illu­sions..

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    Mental Floss at Military Officer magazine

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    Good arti­cle on the August edi­tion of Mil­i­tary Offi­cer mag­a­zine:

    Men­tal Floss (August 2008) (link opens a PDF-life doc­u­ment, you can read the text by Zoom­ing In).

    My 2 favorite quotes, both by Dr. Mol­ly Wag­ster, chief of the Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy of Aging Branch, Nation­al Insti­tute on Aging (NIA) in Bethes­da, Md:

    - “Cer­tain­ly as we age there are declines with brain func­tions and cog­ni­tion. But there’s evi­dence that the aging brain can adapt and change more than we ever thought”.

    - “We don’t know how it hap­pens or how long changes last, but even in the face of these unan­swered ques­tions, there is the chance to main­tain our cog­ni­tive func­tion”.

    Let me add a  reflec­tion: who among us won’t be tomor­row one day old­er than he/she is today? The good news about the “aging brain” does­n’t only refer to adults over 70!

    To explore these con­cepts in more depth, you may enjoy vis­it­ing our Neu­ro­science Inter­view Series.

    Cognitive Health News Round-Up

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    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, [Read more…] about Cog­ni­tive Health News Round-Up