Ballroom dancing can reduce aging-related brain atrophy in the hippocampus (and, more than treadmill walking!)

Social ball­room danc­ing can improve cog­ni­tive func­tions and reduce brain atro­phy in old­er adults who are at increased risk for Alzheimer’s dis­ease and oth­er forms of demen­tia. That’s the key find­ing of my team’s recent­ly pub­lished study in the Jour­nal of Aging and Phys­i­cal Activ­i­ty. In our study, we enrolled 25 adults over 65 years…

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The Mediterranean Diet seen to substantially reduce brain shrinkage among older adults

—– Less shrink­age: This is your aging brain on the Mediter­ranean diet (Los Ange­les Times): “The aging brain is a shrink­ing brain, and a shrink­ing brain is, gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, a brain whose per­for­mance and reac­tion time are declin­ing: That is a harsh real­i­ty of grow­ing old­er. But new research shows that brain shrink­age is less pro­nounced in…

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Top 10 Quotes on Lifelong Neuroplasticity and Neurogenesis (and a Call to eBook Readers)

You may have  noticed that Amazon.com is shar­ing aggre­gat­ed data on how ebook read­ers inter­act with the books they are read­ing. For exam­ple, the “Pop­u­lar High­lights” sec­tion (towards the bot­tom of our Kin­dle book page) ranks the Top 10 sen­tences that Kin­dle read­ers have high­light­ed and shared while read­ing The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: 18…

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Minding the Aging Brain

Cog­ni­tive train­ing (the basis for what we call “brain fit­ness” these days) has a wide array of appli­ca­tions. The most recent one, which is cap­tur­ing pub­lic’s imag­i­na­tion, monop­o­liz­ing media cov­er­age, and cre­at­ing cer­tain con­fu­sion, is Healthy Brain Aging. We are for­tu­nate to have Dr. Joshua Stein­er­man, one of our new Expert Con­trib­u­tors, offer today his…

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