brain-cells

News on how the brain changes over time, how to clear foggy brains, how to multitask (or not), and more

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing time­ly brain & men­tal health news and a fun brain teas­er to test the lim­its of multi-tasking.

#1. Col­lab­o­ra­tive neu­roimag­ing ini­tia­tive Brain­Chart helps chart how brains change across the lifes­pan. Among the many fas­ci­nat­ing findings:

“The vol­ume of grey mat­ter (brain cells) increas­es rapid­ly from mid-ges­ta­tion onwards, peak­ing just before we are six years old. It then begins to decrease slowly.”
“The vol­ume of white mat­ter (brain con­nec­tions) also increased rapid­ly from mid-ges­ta­tion through ear­ly child­hood and peaks just before we are 29 years old.”
“The decline in white mat­ter vol­ume begins to accel­er­ate after 50 years.”

#2. Five ways to clear fog­gy brains and improve cog­ni­tive well-being

“Become more inten­tion­al about con­sum­ing news … news­pa­pers, TV news pro­grams, and many social media sites make their mon­ey by grab­bing your attention—and noth­ing grabs atten­tion bet­ter than neg­a­tive news. But repeat­ed expo­sure to crises wreaks hav­oc with our well-being and can lead to bad deci­sion making.”

#3. As announced in our pre­vi­ous e‑newsletter, the Cen­ter for Brain­Health at UT-Dal­las host­ed a talk titled Nav­i­gat­ing the Brain Health Mar­ket with Álvaro Fer­nán­dez Ibáñez on April 21st. We had over a thou­sand par­tic­i­pants, hun­dreds of com­ments and a superb Q&A at the end — you can enjoy the full ses­sion record­ing HERE, over at YouTube.

#4. Map­ping ‘psy­che­del­ic trips’ in the brain to bet­ter direct their ther­a­peu­tic effects

“Our study shows that it’s pos­si­ble to map the diverse and wild­ly sub­jec­tive psy­che­del­ic expe­ri­ences to spe­cif­ic regions in the brain. These insights may lead to new ways to com­bine exist­ing or yet to be dis­cov­ered com­pounds to pro­duce desired treat­ment effects for a range of psy­chi­atric conditions.”

#5. Altoi­da rais­es fur­ther $14 mil­lion to “democ­ra­tize dig­i­tal cog­ni­tive assess­ment at scale” via aug­ment­ed real­i­ty (AR) and AI

“Through an app down­loaded to a patient’s own smart­phone or tablet, Altoida’s tech first offers up a 10-minute test. A vari­ety of Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty (AR)-powered exer­cis­es mea­sure 11 areas of the brain that have been linked to Alzheimer’s. The video-game-like activ­i­ties ask users to hide and relo­cate vir­tu­al objects around the room, sim­u­late a fire evac­u­a­tion and search for vir­tu­al items while a sound con­tin­u­ous­ly plays .. The result­ing report high­lights symp­toms of cog­ni­tive decline—such as hand and gait errors, eye track­ing, pupil dila­tion and more—and pro­vides a score of the like­li­hood that they’ll devel­op Alzheimer’s with­in the next year.”

#6. Geisinger and Eisai to test real-world valid­i­ty of AI-pow­ered Pas­sive Dig­i­tal Mark­er (PDM) in detect­ing ear­ly cog­ni­tive impair­ment and dementia

“As an imple­men­ta­tion sci­en­tist, it is always excit­ing to have oth­er sci­en­tists eval­u­ate the repro­ducibil­i­ty of the per­for­mance of our pas­sive dig­i­tal mark­er in very dif­fer­ent pop­u­la­tions,” said Malaz Bous­tani, M.D., Richard M. Fair­banks Pro­fes­sor of Aging Research at Indi­ana Uni­ver­si­ty. “Repro­ducibil­i­ty is the cor­ner­stone of sci­en­tif­ic progress.”

#7. Debate: Will dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics gain the required lev­els of aware­ness, adop­tion, reim­burse­ment and ful­fill­ment to become sustainable?

“There’s still a lot of foun­da­tion­al work that needs to be done,” said Maya Desai, direc­tor of life sci­ences for Guide­house. “There’s a lot of behav­ioral change that needs to hap­pen across the stake­hold­ers and their mind­sets to think about dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics as a cat­e­go­ry of its own.”

#8. And, yes, here’s the quick brain teas­er to test the lim­its of multitasking

 

Wish­ing you and yours a healthy and stim­u­lat­ing May … Sum­mer is Coming.

 

The Sharp­Brains Team

Promote brain plasticity and keep your mind at ease by taking your daily “exercise pill”

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As with many oth­er physi­cians, rec­om­mend­ing phys­i­cal activ­i­ty to patients was just a doc­tor chore for me – until a few years ago. That was because I myself was not very active. Over the years, as I picked up box­ing and became more active, I got first­hand expe­ri­ence of pos­i­tive impacts on my mind. I also start­ed research­ing the effects of dance and move­ment ther­a­pies on trau­ma and anx­i­ety in refugee chil­dren, and I learned a lot more about the neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gy of exer­cise. [Read more…] about Pro­mote brain plas­tic­i­ty and keep your mind at ease by tak­ing your dai­ly “exer­cise pill”

New “bionic hybrid neuro chip” to improve understanding of brain function by enabling high-fidelity, long-term recordings of brain cell activity

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brain_chipNeu­ro Chip Records Brain Cell Activ­i­ty (R&D):

“Brain func­tions are con­trolled by mil­lions of brain cells. How­ev­er, in order to under­stand how the brain con­trols func­tions, such as sim­ple reflex­es or learn­ing and mem­o­ry, we must be able to record [Read more…] about New “bion­ic hybrid neu­ro chip” to improve under­stand­ing of brain func­tion by enabling high-fideli­ty, long-term record­ings of brain cell activity

Transcript: Dr. Gary Small on Enhancing Memory and the Brain

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Below you can find the full tran­script of our engag­ing Q&A ses­sion today on mem­ory, mem­ory tech­niques and brain-healthy lifestyles with Dr. Gary  Small, Direc­tor of UCLA’s Mem­ory Clin­ic and Cen­ter on Aging, and author of The Mem­ory Bible. You can learn more about his book  Here, and learn more about upcom­ing Brain Fit­ness Q&A Ses­sions Here.

Per­haps one of the best ques­tions and answers was:

2:55
Ques­tion: Gary, you’ve worked many years in this field. Let us in on the secret. What do YOU do you, per­son­al­ly, to pro­mote your own brain fitness?
2:57
Answer: I try to get at least 30 min­utes of aer­o­bic con­di­tion­ing each day; try to min­i­mize my stress by stay­ing con­nect­ed with fam­i­ly and friends; gen­er­al­ly eat a brain healthy diet (fish, fruits, veg­eta­bles), and try to bal­ance my online time with my offline time. Which reminds me, I think it is almost time for me to sign off line. [Read more…] about Tran­script: Dr. Gary Small on Enhanc­ing Mem­o­ry and the Brain

Brain Training for Babies: Hope, Hype, Both?

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Train­ing the brain is pos­si­ble because of neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty. Our dai­ly expe­ri­ences can trig­ger neu­ro­plas­tic changes in the brain, such as the growth of new brain cells (neu­rons) and new con­nec­tions (synaps­es) between neu­rons. Plas­tic­i­ty is observed at all ages but is at its peak dur­ing brain devel­op­ment, as a baby and then a child learns basic knowl­edge and skills nec­es­sary to sur­vive. We should thus expect that the brain of a baby could be eas­i­ly trained. This is what Wass and his col­leagues recent­ly demon­strat­ed in a new study with 11-month-old babies. [Read more…] about Brain Train­ing for Babies: Hope, Hype, Both?

Physical and mental exercise to prevent cognitive decline

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We offered some Brain Fit­ness Pre­dic­tions in our Mar­ket Report , including…

“7. Doc­tors and phar­ma­cists will help patients nav­i­gate through the over­whelm­ing range of avail­able prod­ucts and inter­pret the results of cog­ni­tive assess­ments. This will require sig­nif­i­cant pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment efforts, giv­en that most doc­tors today were trained under a very dif­fer­ent under­stand­ing of the brain than the one we have today.”

The Amer­i­can Med­ical News, a week­ly news­pa­per for physi­cians pub­lished by the Amer­i­can Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion, just pub­lished an excel­lent arti­cle along those lines:

Steps to a nim­ble mind: Phys­i­cal and men­tal exer­cise help keep the brain fit
— Neu­ro­science is uncov­er­ing tech­niques to pre­vent cog­ni­tive decline.

A few quotes:

- It’s an exam­ple that high­lights a wave of new think­ing about the impor­tance of brain fitness.

- Until recent­ly, con­ven­tion­al wis­dom held that our brains were intractable, hard-wired com­put­ers. What we were born with was all we got. Age wore down mem­o­ry and the abil­i­ty to under­stand, and few inter­ven­tions could reverse this process. But increas­ing­ly, evi­dence sug­gests that phys­i­cal and men­tal exer­cise can alter spe­cif­ic brain regions, mak­ing rad­i­cal improve­ments in cog­ni­tive function.

- With near­ly 72 mil­lion Amer­i­cans turn­ing 65 over the next two decades, physi­cians need the tools to han­dle grow­ing patient con­cerns about how to best main­tain brain health. Armed with this new brand of sci­ence, front­line physi­cians will be bet­ter equipped to address the needs of aging baby boomers, already in the throes of the brain fit­ness revolution.

- “Encour­age them to exer­cise the brain in nov­el and com­plex ways,” he says.

Full arti­cle: here

One of the physi­cians quot­ed in the arti­cle is Gary J. Kennedy, MD, Direc­tor of the Divi­sion of Geri­atric Psy­chi­a­try at Mon­te­fiore Med­ical Cen­ter in NYC and a pro­fes­sor in the Dept. of Psy­chi­a­try and Behav­ioral Sci­ences at Albert Ein­stein Col­lege of Medicine.

To put the AMA arti­cle in bet­ter per­spec­tive for Sharp­Brains read­ers, we asked Dr. Kennedy a few fol­low-up ques­tions. Below you have his questions.

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez (AF): Can you sum­ma­rize how cog­ni­tive func­tions tend to evolve as we age?

Gary Kennedy (GK): As we age cog­ni­tive func­tions that rely on [Read more…] about Phys­i­cal and men­tal exer­cise to pre­vent cog­ni­tive decline