Alzheimers-risk

Football: Even “minor” hits can cause brain damage

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Today the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Neu­rol­o­gy (AAN) “is call­ing for any ath­lete who is sus­pect­ed of hav­ing a con­cus­sion to be removed from play until the ath­lete is eval­u­at­ed by a physi­cian with train­ing in the eval­u­a­tion and man­age­ment of sports concussion.”

At the same time, an arti­cle in Sports Illus­trat­ed reports a new study in which Pur­due researchers put sen­sors (accelerom­e­ters) in the hel­mets of 23 seniors from Jef­fer­son High in Lafayette, Ind. Results are sur­pris­ing and con­cern­ing: Hits that do not even lead to con­cus­sions can have a much big­ger impact on the brain than we thought. [Read more…] about Foot­ball: Even “minor” hits can cause brain damage

Montessori classroom for Alzheimer’s disease patients

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A beau­ti­ful ini­tia­tive, fea­tured in the New York Times today:
Com­ing Full Circle:

- “In a typ­i­cal Montes­sori class­room, teach­ers use cat­e­go­ry-sort­ing exer­cis­es to help young stu­dents see pat­terns and con­nec­tions. But the par­tic­i­pants in this group were most­ly in their 80s and on the oth­er side of the cog­ni­tive devel­op­ment curve. They are res­i­dents at an assist­ed-liv­ing facil­i­ty for peo­ple with demen­tia called Hearth­stone at the Esplanade, which has six oth­er homes in New York State and Mass­a­chu­setts. Since July the res­i­dents have par­tic­i­pat­ed in a full-time pro­gram of Montes­sori-based activ­i­ties designed for peo­ple with mem­o­ry deficiencies.”

- “A com­mon mis­con­cep­tion about peo­ple with demen­tia, Dr. Camp said, is that they no longer learn. But they do: res­i­dents learn to find their din­ing room table, for exam­ple, well after the onset of Alzheimer’s dis­ease. And because they no longer have the high­er brain func­tion they had as adults, he rea­soned, they are well suit­ed to Montessori.”

Full arti­cle: Com­ing Full Cir­cle.

Relat­ed posts:

- Alzheimer’s Risk and Pre­ven­tion: the Cog­ni­tive Reserve

- Your com­ments on cog­ni­tive train­ing, Posit Sci­ence, Alzheimer’s Aus­tralia, geron­tol­ogy, games

Can food improve brain health?

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In oth­er words, may some foods be specif­i­cal­ly good for brain function?

For a great in-depth review of the effects of food on the brain you can check out Fer­nan­do Gomez-Pinil­la’s recent arti­cle in Nature Reviews Neu­ro­science (ref­er­ence below). Here is an overview of the state off the research.

Sev­er­al com­po­nents of diet seem to have a pos­i­tive effect on brain function.

Omega‑3 fat­ty acids

These acids are nor­mal con­stituents of cell mem­branes and are essen­tial for nor­mal brain func­tion. Omega‑3 fat­ty acids can be found in fish (salmon), kiwi, and wal­nuts. Docosa­hexaenoic acid, or DHA, is the most abun­dant omega‑3 fat­ty acid in cell mem­branes in the brain. The human body pro­duces DHA but not enough. So we are depen­dent on the DHA that we get from what we eat.

A ran­dom­ized dou­ble-blind con­trolled tri­al (which means seri­ous­ly con­duct­ed sci­en­tif­ic study) is cur­rent­ly look­ing at the effect of tak­ing omega‑3 fat­ty acids on chil­dren’s per­for­mance at school in Eng­land. Pre­lim­i­nary results (Port­wood, 2006) sug­gest that [Read more…] about Can food improve brain health?

Cognitive Health News Roundup

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July is shap­ing up to be a fas­ci­nat­ing month, full of cog­ni­tive health research reports and appli­ca­tions. Here you have a roundup, cov­er­ing food for the brain, cog­ni­tive assess­ments, men­tal train­ing and DNA, and more.

1) Brain foods: the effects of nutri­ents on brain func­tion (Nature Neuroscience)

“Brain foods: the effects of nutri­ents on brain func­tion”, by Fer­nan­do Gmez-Pinilla.

Abstract: [Read more…] about Cog­ni­tive Health News Roundup

On The Brain

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neuronsVery intense week, and very fun. I will be writ­ing more about this week’s 3 speak­ing events, but let me say now that our key messages

1) our brains remain flex­i­ble dur­ing our lifetimes,

2) we can refine our brains with tar­get­ed practice,

3) good brain exer­cise, or “men­tal cross-training”, requires nov­el­ty, vari­ety, and increas­ing lev­el of chal­lenge (but with­out cre­at­ing too much stress),

are being very well accept­ed from both healthy aging and work­place pro­duc­tiv­i­ty points of view. We have ONE brain: health and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty are 2 sides of the same coin.

If you want to make sure we learn more about our brains, you can help fel­low blog­ger Shel­ley Batts get a col­lege schol­ar­ship by voting here. She has a great neu­ro­science blog, is now final­ist in a com­pe­ti­tion to win a nice schol­ar­ship, and needs out help.

Have some more time? You can watch this excellent 90-sec­ond video of cog­ni­tive neu­ro­sci­en­tist Dr Lisa Sak­si­da doing yoga in front of the fire while explain­ing the nature of Brain and Mind (via Mind­Hacks). Quotes:

“I wish peo­ple under­stood that there is no mind/brain dual­i­ty. Specif­i­cal­ly, I wish peo­ple under­stood that there is no such thing as a pure­ly psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­or­der. Every event in your psy­cho­log­i­cal life, and there­fore every psy­cho­log­i­cal change, is reducible in the­o­ry to events and changes in your brain. We should there­fore not judge peo­ple dif­fer­ent­ly, accord­ing to whether they are con­sid­ered to have a ‘psy­cho­log­i­cal’ as opposed to a ‘neu­ro­log­i­cal’ problem.”

“Of course, a lack of mind/brain split does not mean that we should aban­don all talk of psy­chol­o­gy. Psy­chol­o­gy and neu­ro­science are two ways of study­ing the same thing, and both are essen­tial for under­stand­ing the human condition.”

For more, check the posts in these always great blog car­ni­vals (select­ed col­lec­tions of blog posts by a num­ber of blog­gers around spe­cif­ic topics)

Tan­gled Bank (sci­ence in general)

Encephalon (neu­ro­science)

Cred­it: Pho­to of Neu­rons by sym­pha­nee via flickr