Mark your calendar for BrainHealth Week: February 20–24th

The brain changes each and every day dur­ing our whole lives, based on how we use it. Health­i­er dai­ly habits can improve the tra­jec­to­ry of our lives. “A brain that can think crit­i­cal­ly, that can func­tion under stress, a brain that is resilient in the face of trau­ma, a brain that is cre­ative, that is thoughtful,…

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Collaborative neuroimaging initiative BrainChart helps chart how brains change across the lifespan

For decades, growth charts have been used by pae­di­a­tri­cians as ref­er­ence tools. The charts allow health pro­fes­sion­als to plot and mea­sure a child’s height and weight from birth to young adult­hood. The per­centile scores they pro­vide, espe­cial­ly across mul­ti­ple vis­its, help doc­tors screen for con­di­tions such as obe­si­ty or inad­e­quate growth, which fall at the…

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

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…

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Next: Brain scans to identify children at high risk of developing multiple sclerosis (MS) before symptoms appear

______________________________ MS risk in chil­dren spot­ted with MRI brain scans (Yale News): “By the time mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis (MS) is diag­nosed in chil­dren, it may be dif­fi­cult to pre­vent the dis­abil­i­ties and relaps­es that come with the dis­ease. In a new Yale School of Med­i­cine study, researchers exam­ined MRI brain scans to iden­ti­fy chil­dren at high risk…

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Study: Brain scans may predict depression risk better than clinical rating scales, paving the way for earlier preventive treatments

Brain Scans Could Iden­ti­fy Kids at Risk of Depres­sion (Smith­son­ian): “One of the most fright­en­ing aspects of depres­sion is the fact that, once some­one suf­fers a depres­sive episode, they’re very like­ly to have anoth­er. And depres­sion itself often brings oth­er ills, from sub­stance abuse to heart disease

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