Education AND Lifelong Cognitive Activities build Cognitive Reserve and Delay Memory Loss

In a recent­ly pub­lished sci­en­tif­ic study (see Hall C, et al “Cog­ni­tive activ­i­ties delay onset of mem­o­ry decline in per­sons who devel­op demen­tia” Neu­rol­o­gy 2009; 73: 356–361), Hall and col­leagues exam­ined how edu­ca­tion and stim­u­lat­ing activ­i­ties may inter­act to con­tribute to cog­ni­tive reserve. The study involved 488 ini­tial­ly healthy peo­ple, aver­age age 79, who enrolled…

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Preparing Society for the Cognitive Age (Frontiers in Neuroscience article)

(Edi­tor’s note: this arti­cle belongs to the excel­lent May 2009 spe­cial issue on Aug­ment­ing Cog­ni­tion at sci­en­tif­ic jour­nal Fron­tiers in Neu­ro­science. The arti­cle, an indus­try overview, is repro­duced here with autho­riza­tion by the Fron­tiers Research Foun­da­tion) Prepar­ing Soci­ety for the Cog­ni­tive Age By Alvaro Fer­nan­dez Ground­break­ing cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science research has occurred over the last 20 years — without…

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Bird’s Eye View of Cognitive Health Innovation

My pre­sen­ta­tion to open our Games for Health Con­fer­ence track is now avail­able via SlideShare: See Bird’s Eye View of Cog­ni­tive Health Inno­va­tion Descrip­tion: Sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal and demo­graph­ic trends have con­verged to cre­ate a new $265m mar­ket in the US alone: seri­ous games, soft­ware and online appli­ca­tions that can help peo­ple of all ages assess…

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Maintain Your Brain and Stay Sharp: An Upcoming Guide and Resource

You may be read­ing all about brain fit­ness and brain train­ing. It seems every week brings a new bar­rage of arti­cles and stud­ies which often con­tra­dict what you read the month before: Does Gingko Bilo­ba help delay Alzheimer’s Dis­ease? Can phys­i­cal exer­cise help you stay sharp as you age? Which com­put­er-based “brain fit­ness pro­grams”, if…

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Cognitive Health Track at Games for Health Conference

Ben Sawyer and I just agreed to cre­ate a new Cog­ni­tive Health track ‑Pow­ered by Sharp­Brains- at the 5th Annu­al Games for Health Con­fer­ence. I will host the 11-ses­­sion track, cov­er­ing a vari­ety of cog­ni­tive health and brain fit­ness top­ics and an overview of Sharp­Brains’ upcom­ing report The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket 2009.…

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Brain Games and Training for Baby Boomers: News Round-Up

Round-up of recent news with a vari­ety of angles, from the effects of gam­ing to cog­ni­tive train­ing for dri­ving skills and brain fit­ness class­es. Seniors use brain train­ing soft­ware to sharp­en their minds (Dal­las Morn­ing News) — “All­state Insur­ance has invit­ed some pol­i­cy­hold­ers and oth­er old­er dri­vers to try InSight so researchers can eval­u­ate whether the…

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