Alzheimer’s Disease: New Survey and Research Study on Awareness, Testing and Prevention

By Alvaro Fernandez | July 21, 2011 |

Very inter­est­ing new data rein­forc­ing two main themes we have been ana­lyz­ing for a while: 1) We bet­ter start pay­ing seri­ous atten­tion (and R&D dol­lars) to lifestyle-based and non-inva­­sive cog­ni­tive and emo­tion­al health inter­ven­tions, which are most­ly ignored in favor of inva­sive, drug-based options 2) Inter­ven­tions will need to be per­son­al­ized. The study below ana­lyzes data…

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Alzheimer’s Early and Accurate Diagnosis: Normal Aging vs. Alzheimer’s Disease

By Dr. Murali Doraiswamy | April 29, 2009

(Edi­tor’s Note: I recent­ly came across an excel­lent book and resource, The Alzheimer’s Action Plan: The Experts’ Guide to the Best Diag­no­sis and Treat­ment for Mem­o­ry Prob­lems, just released in paper­back. Dr. Murali Doraiswamy, one of the authors and lead­ing Alzheimer’s expert, kind­ly helped us cre­ate a 2‑part arti­cle series to share with Sharp­Brains readers…

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Brain Fitness Update: Best of 2008

By Alvaro Fernandez | December 31, 2008 |

Dear read­er and mem­ber of Sharp­Brains’ com­mu­ni­ty, We want to thank you for your atten­tion and sup­port in 2008, and wish you a Hap­py, Pros­per­ous, Healthy and Pos­i­tive 2009! Below you have the Decem­ber edi­tion of our month­ly newslet­ter. Enjoy: Best of 2008  Announc­ing the Sharp­Brains Most Impor­tant Book of 2008: Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Torkel Kling­berg has writ­ten a very…

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Brain Health: Physical or Mental Exercise?

By Alvaro Fernandez | June 10, 2008 |

Our fel­low blog­ger Jere­my over at Psy­Blog has writ­ten a thought­ful post com­par­ing the val­ue of a num­ber of cog­ni­tive enhanc­ing tools. His over­all ver­dict? “The evi­dence for exer­cise boost­ing cog­ni­tive func­tion is head-and-shoul­ders above that for brain train­ing, drugs, nutri­tion­al sup­ple­ments and med­i­ta­tion. Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly, on the cur­rent evi­dence, exer­cise is the best way to…

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Brain Training Games: Context, Trends, Questions

By Alvaro Fernandez | February 15, 2008 |

A spate of recent news cov­er­age on brain fit­ness and “brain train­ing” reflects a grow­ing inter­est in nat­ur­al, non-drug-based inter­ven­tions to keep our brains sharp as we age. This inter­est is very time­ly, giv­en the aging pop­u­la­tion, increas­ing Alzheimer’s rates, and soar­ing health care costs that place more empha­sis than ever on pre­ven­tion and changing…

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Cognitive Reserve and Intellectually Demanding Jobs

By Alvaro Fernandez | December 26, 2007 |

I hope you are hav­ing hap­py hol­i­days, and are get­ting ready for New Year cel­e­bra­tions. Best wish­es to you and your loved ones. Via Med­Jour­nal­Watch we just found this inter­est­ing paper, Asso­ci­a­tions of job demands and intel­li­gence with cog­ni­tive per­for­mance among men in late life. Guy G. Pot­ter PhD*, Michael J. Helms BS, and Bren­da L. Plassman…

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