Fully-automated analysis of voice recordings–from neuropsychological tests–found to help differentiate normal cognition from dementia and mild cognitive impairment

By SharpBrains | August 16, 2022

Voice Record­ings Spot Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment (Med­Page Today): A machine-learn­ing mod­el iden­ti­fied mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment and demen­tia from dig­i­tal voice record­ings of neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal tests, an ear­ly study showed. Among 1,084 peo­ple in the Fram­ing­ham Heart Study whose tests were record­ed, the aver­age area under the curve (AUC) reached 92.6% for dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing nor­mal cog­ni­tion from demen­tia, 88.0% for…

Read More

Study finds that cognitive activity in old age may delay the onset of dementia by 5 years

By SharpBrains | July 20, 2021

Demen­tia Comes 5 Years Lat­er for Some (Med­Page Today): A cog­ni­tive­ly active lifestyle that involves read­ing and pro­cess­ing infor­ma­tion in old age may delay the onset of demen­tia in Alzheimer’s dis­ease by as much as 5 years, a lon­gi­tu­di­nal study sug­gest­ed. Old­er adults who had the high­est lev­el of late-life cog­ni­tive activ­i­ty had a mean onset…

Read More

Study: Over-the-counter “brain enhancement” supplements in the US found both to a) contain multiple unapproved drugs and b) lack some ingredients listed on the label

By SharpBrains | October 20, 2020

Study: Your Brain Sup­ple­ments Could Con­tain Dan­ger­ous, Ille­gal Ingre­di­ents (Being Patient): Brain sup­ple­ments that claim to boost cog­ni­tive func­tion are increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar, grow­ing from a $4 bil­lion indus­try of about 4,000 unique prod­ucts to a $40 bil­lion indus­try with as many as 80,000 dif­fer­ent prod­ucts on the market. 

Read More

Study: Moderate lifetime drinking may lead to lower Alzheimer-related beta amyloid deposits in the brain

By SharpBrains | March 27, 2020

__ Mod­er­ate drink­ing tied to low­er lev­els of Alzheimer’s brain pro­tein (Busi­ness Stan­dard): “Kore­an researchers stud­ied 414 men and women, aver­age age 71, who were free of demen­tia or alco­hol-relat­ed dis­or­ders. All under­went phys­i­cal exams, tests of men­tal acu­ity, and positron emis­sion tomog­ra­phy (PET) and mag­net­ic res­o­nance imag­ing (MRI) scans. They were care­ful­ly inter­viewed about…

Read More

The NIH starts spending $1.5 billion in new Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neuro-technologies (BRAIN) projects

By SharpBrains | March 7, 2018

___ NIH Starts to Spend $4.8 Bil­lion in “Extra” Cures Drug Research Mon­ey (P&T Com­mu­ni­ty): “The Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health (NIH) launched 110 new brain research projects in the fis­cal year end­ing last Sep­tem­ber (2017) with the first por­tion of the $1.5 bil­lion over 10 years it will hope­ful­ly receive from the 21st Cen­tu­ry Cures…

Read More

With pharma exiting Alzheimer’s research, new hope (and urgency) seen in the combination of brain training and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS)

By SharpBrains | January 22, 2018

___ What does the future hold for the war on Alzheimer’s? (The Globe and Mail): “After spend­ing huge sums on clin­i­cal trails in recent years, the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try has failed to find a drug that can halt the mind-rob­bing dis­ease. And this month, Pfiz­er announced it is end­ing its Alzheimer’s research, although oth­er com­pa­nies haven’t thrown…

Read More