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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 the rest of this entry »

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 the rest of this entry »

Each part will :

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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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:

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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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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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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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.