Can We Pick Your Brain re. Cognitive Assessments?

If you could, you would. You can, but pre­fer not to know it? More than any oth­er organ, your brain is up to you. You are what you think, not just what you eat. Here’s some food for thought: Design your Mind Set­ting cog­ni­tive and behav­ioral goals rais­es chal­leng­ing and wor­thy ques­tions: What do you want from…

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Neurotechnology Trends, and the Neurosoftware Market

The Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy Indus­try Orga­ni­za­tion (NIO) just announced the top ten emerg­ing areas of neu­ro­science that will “impact the future of treat­ments for brain and ner­vous sys­tem”: Top 10 Neu­ro­science Trends in 2007. It pro­vides superb food for thought. And some of them will sound famil­iar to read­ers of this blog: * 6. Nor­mal brain aging gets…

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Feed Your Brain with Fun Neuroscience

To all new read­­ers-Wel­­come!. The Digg Tsuna­mi has brought over 40,000 vis­i­tors so far…and it con­tin­ues. We need to thank Andrey for his excel­lent tech­ni­cal work in help­ing us ride such a beau­ti­ful wave. Let me give you an overview of what you can find in our blog, bridg­ing neu­ro­science research and brain health/ “brain exercise”…

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Build Your Cognitive Reserve: An Interview with Dr. Yaakov Stern

Dr. Yaakov Stern is the Divi­sion Leader of the Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science Divi­sion of the Sergievsky Cen­ter, and Pro­fes­sor of Clin­i­cal Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy, at the Col­lege of Physi­cians and Sur­geons of Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, New York. Alvaro Fer­nan­dez inter­views him here as part of our research for The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness book. Dr. Stern is one…

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Cognitive Reserve and Lifestyle

In hon­or of the Week of Sci­ence pre­sent­ed at Just Sci­ence we will be writ­ing about “just science”.Today, we will high­light the key points in an excel­lent review of cog­ni­tive reserve: Today, we will high­light the key points in an excel­lent review of cog­ni­tive reserve: Scarmeas, Niko­laos and Stern, Yaakov. Cog­ni­tive reserve and lifestyle. Jour­nal of Clin­i­cal and Exper­i­men­tal Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy. 2003;25:625–33.The con­cept of cog­ni­tive reserve has been defined as the abil­i­ty of an indi­vid­ual to tol­er­ate pro­gres­sive brain pathol­o­gy with­out demon­strat­ing clin­i­cal cog­ni­tive symp­toms. Epi­demi­o­log­i­cal evi­dence sug­gests that indi­vid­u­als with high­er IQ, edu­ca­tion, occu­pa­tion­al achieve­ment, or par­tic­i­pa­tion in intel­lec­tu­al­ly and social­ly active lifestyles may result in both quan­ti­ta­tive­ly more cog­ni­tive net­works and qual­i­ta­tive­ly more func­tion­al­ly effi­cient net­works result­ing in more reserve.

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