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Cerebrum

Promoting Healthy, Meaningful Aging Through Social Involvement: Building an Experience Corps

August 30, 2011 by Dana Foundation

(Editor’s note: Path­ways respon­si­ble for high­er-order think­ing in the pre­frontal cor­tex (PFC), or exec­u­tive cen­ter of the brain, remain vul­ner­a­ble through­out life—during crit­i­cal ear­ly-life devel­op­men­tal win­dows, when the PFC ful­ly matures in the ear­ly 20s, and final­ly from declines asso­ci­at­ed with old age. At all ages, phys­i­cal activ­i­ty and PFC-nav­i­gat­ed social con­nec­tions are essen­tial com­po­nents to main­tain­ing brain health. The Expe­ri­ence Corps, a com­mu­ni­ty-based social-engage­ment pro­gram, part­ners seniors with local schools to pro­mote pur­pose-dri­ven involve­ment. Par­tic­i­pat­ing seniors have exhib­it­ed imme­di­ate short-term gains in brain regions vul­ner­a­ble to aging, such as the PFC, indi­cat­ing that peo­ple with the most to lose have the most to gain from envi­ron­men­tal enrichment.)

Over the last decade, sci­en­tists made two key dis­cov­er­ies that reframed our under­stand­ing of the adult brain’s poten­tial to ben­e­fit from life­long envi­ron­men­tal enrich­ment. First, they learned that the adult brain remains plas­tic; it can gen­er­ate new neu­rons in response to phys­i­cal activ­i­ty and new expe­ri­ences. Sec­ond, they con­firmed the impor­tance of social con­nect­ed­ness to late-life cog­ni­tive, psy­cho­log­i­cal, and phys­i­cal health. The inte­gra­tion of these find­ings with our under­stand­ing of indi­vid­u­als’ devel­op­men­tal needs through­out life under­scores the impor­tance of the “social brain.” The pre­frontal cor­tex (PFC) is par­tic­u­lar­ly inte­gral to nav­i­gat­ing com­plex social behav­iors and hier­ar­chies over the life course. [Read more…] about Pro­mot­ing Healthy, Mean­ing­ful Aging Through Social Involve­ment: Build­ing an Expe­ri­ence Corps

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: academic-performance., aging, Alzheimers-disease, Arthur-Kramer, Brain-health, Brain-Plasticity, Cerebrum, chronic disease, cognitive-exercises, developing brain, environmental enrichment, experience-corps, higher-order thinking, literacy, maintain brain health, Mental-Health, Michelle C. Carlson, neurocognitive, Neurogenesis, old-age, PFC, physical exercises, Physical-activity, physical-health, plastic brain, postretirement, prefrontal-cortex, retirement, social brain, The Experience Corps

Experience Corps: Promoting Healthy, Meaningful Aging Through Social Involvement

June 28, 2011 by Alvaro Fernandez

The cur­rent issue of Cere­brum –a great pub­li­ca­tion of the Dana Foun­da­tion– includes the excel­lent in-depth arti­cle Pro­mot­ing Healthy, Mean­ing­ful Aging Through Social Involve­ment: Build­ing an Expe­ri­ence Corps, writ­ten by researcher Michelle Carlson:

“Over the last decade, sci­en­tists made two key dis­cov­er­ies that reframed our under­stand­ing of the adult brain’s poten­tial to ben­e­fit from life­long envi­ron­men­tal enrich­ment. First, they learned that the adult brain remains plas­tic; it can gen­er­ate new neu­rons in response to phys­i­cal activ­i­ty and new expe­ri­ences. Sec­ond, they con­firmed the impor­tance of [Read more…] about Expe­ri­ence Corps: Pro­mot­ing Healthy, Mean­ing­ful Aging Through Social Involvement

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: aging, brain, Brain-health, Cerebrum, cognitive-exercises, cognitive-health, dana-foundation, environmental enrichment, experience-corps, legacy building, lifelong environmental enrichment, Michelle Carlson, occupational attainment, physical exercises, physical-health, prefrontal-cortex, psychological health, social brain

A Decade after The Decade of the Brain – Educational and Clinical Implications of Neuroplasticity

February 23, 2010 by Dana Foundation

(Edi­tor’s Note: In 1990, Con­gressCerebrumFeb2010_feat des­ig­nat­ed the 1990s the “Decade of the Brain.” Pres­i­dent George H. W. Bush pro­claimed, “A new era of dis­cov­ery is dawn­ing in brain research.” Dur­ing the ensu­ing decade, sci­en­tists great­ly advanced our under­stand­ing of the brain. The edi­tors of Cere­brum asked the direc­tors of sev­en brain-relat­ed insti­tutes at the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health (NIH) to iden­ti­fy the biggest advances, great­est dis­ap­point­ments, and missed oppor­tu­ni­ties of brain research in the past decade—the decade after the “Decade of the Brain.” They also asked them what looks most promis­ing for the com­ing decade, the 2010s. Experts focused on research that might change how doc­tors diag­nose and treat human brain disorders.)

Neu­ro­science is at a his­toric turn­ing point. Today, a full decade after the “Decade of the Brain,” a con­tin­u­ous stream of advances is shat­ter­ing long-held notions about how the human brain works and what hap­pens when it doesn’t. These advances are also reshap­ing the land­scapes of oth­er fields, from psy­chol­o­gy to eco­nom­ics, edu­ca­tion and the law.

Until the Decade of the Brain, sci­en­tists believed that, once devel­op­ment was over, the adult brain under­went very few changes. This per­cep­tion con­tributed to polar­iz­ing per­spec­tives on whether genet­ics or envi­ron­ment deter­mines a person’s tem­pera­ment and per­son­al­i­ty, apti­tudes, and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to men­tal dis­or­ders. But dur­ing the past two decades, neu­ro­sci­en­tists have steadi­ly built the case that the human brain, even when ful­ly mature, is far more plastic—changing and malleable—than we orig­i­nal­ly thought.1 It turns out that the brain (at all ages) is high­ly respon­sive to envi­ron­men­tal stim­uli and that con­nec­tions between neu­rons are dynam­ic and can rapid­ly change with­in min­utes of stimulation.

Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty is mod­u­lat­ed in part by [Read more…] about A Decade after The Decade of the Brain – Edu­ca­tion­al and Clin­i­cal Impli­ca­tions of Neuroplasticity

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: Cerebrum, Clinical Implications, Educational implications, neuroplasticity, NIH, NIH conference, Nora Volkov, ntdp, omar, peter georgescu, peter sims, The Decade of the Brain

Work (and Juggle) for Cognitive Health

December 7, 2008 by Alvaro Fernandez

Spec­tac­u­lar arti­cle by Dr. Denise Park in this mon­th’s Cere­brum:

Work­ing Lat­er in Life May Facil­i­tate Neur­al Health

- “Car­mi School­er at the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health, using a tech­nique that allowed him to assess causal rela­tion­ships, found that adults who per­formed intel­lec­tu­al­ly chal­leng­ing jobs across their life span showed more cog­ni­tive flex­i­bil­i­ty in late adult­hood than those who per­formed less demand­ing jobs.”
— “Per­haps the most com­pelling evi­dence regard­ing the impact of nov­el expe­ri­ences on brain vol­ume and func­tion comes from a study at the Max Planck Insti­tute in Ger­many. Adults with a mean age of 59 spent three months learn­ing to jug­gle three balls. Although only about half the par­tic­i­pants were able to achieve com­pe­tence in this com­plex skill, those who suc­ceed­ed had increased vol­ume in a mediotem­po­ral area of the visu­al cor­tex as well as the nucle­us accum­bens and the hip­pocam­pus, sug­gest­ing that sus­tained nov­el expe­ri­ence can increase the sizes of neur­al struc­tures. Notably, the changes in the nucle­us accum­bens and hip­pocam­pus were [Read more…] about Work (and Jug­gle) for Cog­ni­tive Health

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: across-life-span, adults, brain-function, brain-volume, caregiving, Cerebrum, cognitive-flexibility, dementia, Denise-Park, hippocampus, intellectually-challenging, intellectually-challenging-jobs, juggle, juggle-study, juggler-study, Max-Planck-Institute, National-Institutes-of-Health, neural-health, neuroprotective, novel-experience, public-health, Use-It-or-Lose-It, work

Can We Pick Your Brain re. Cognitive Assessments?

November 14, 2008 by Dr. Joshua Steinerman

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 your brain? Will you know it when you achieve it?

To attain the brain of our choos­ing, we must under­stand our selves and cur­rent abil­i­ties. Intro­spec­tion and curios­i­ty are help­ful if they trig­ger and sus­tain the effort to enrich the mind. How­ev­er, objec­tive infor­ma­tion which leads to informed assess­ment of brain func­tion is often lacking.

Mind your Brain

Hon­esty. Open­ness. Self-awareness.

Irrefutable virtues, but in prac­tice most peo­ple fall short. Few reg­u­lar­ly appraise their brain skills; even so, the abil­i­ty to accu­rate­ly judge one’s own men­tal per­for­mance is not guar­an­teed. I believe the first step to mind­ing the brain is shed­ding hang-ups while offer­ing and solic­it­ing frank feed­back from fam­i­ly and close con­fi­dants. In the clin­i­cal set­ting, rou­tine cog­ni­tive screen­ing and “men­tal check ups” are not cur­rent­ly prac­ticed, in part due to time con­straints and lim­it­ed util­i­ty of tra­di­tion­al paper-and-pen­cil tests. From a pub­lic health per­spec­tive, the U.S. Pre­ven­ta­tive Task Force reviewed [Read more…] about Can We Pick Your Brain re. Cog­ni­tive Assessments?

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: aging, Alzheimers-diagnosis, behavioral-goals, brain, brain-aging, brain-assessment, brain-fitness-program, brain-function, brain-longevity, Cerebrum, cognitive-abilities, cognitive-assessments, cognitive-decline, cognitive-neurotechnology, cognitive-psychology, cognitive-screening, cognitivee-goals, computer-based-cognitive-assessments, Einstein-Montefiore-Brain-Aging-Center, innovation, mental-check-ups, mental-performance, mind, Neurotechnology, Prevent-Alzheimers, technology

The Future of Computer-assisted Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

September 3, 2008 by Alvaro Fernandez

The Wall Street Jour­nal had a very inter­est­ing arti­cle yes­ter­day, titled To Be Young and Anx­i­ety-Free, focused on the val­ue of cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py to help chil­dren with high lev­els of anx­i­ety learn how too cope bet­ter and pre­vent the snow­ball sce­nario, when that anx­i­ety grows and spi­rals out of con­trol result­ing in depres­sion and similar

- “…new research show­ing that treat­ing kids for anx­i­ety when they are young may help pre­vent the devel­op­ment of more seri­ous men­tal ill­ness­es, includ­ing depres­sion and more debil­i­tat­ing anx­i­ety disorders.”

- “Of course, most kids have fears with­out hav­ing a full-blown anx­i­ety dis­or­der. And some anx­i­ety is healthy: It makes sense, for exam­ple, to be a lit­tle ner­vous before a big test. Doc­tors and psy­chol­o­gists do cau­tion that the increased focus on child­hood anx­i­ety could lead to an over­diag­no­sis of the prob­lem. What makes anx­i­ety a true ill­ness is when it inter­feres with nor­mal func­tion­ing or caus­es seri­ous emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal distress.”

- “But the use of anti­de­pres­sants in chil­dren has come under fire because [Read more…] about The Future of Com­put­er-assist­ed Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Therapy

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Aaron-Beck, antidepressants, anxiety, anxiety-disorders, cCBT, Cerebrum, cognitive-abilities, cognitive-behavioral-therapy, cognitive-therapy, computer-assisted-cognitive-therapy, dana-foundation, Judith-Beck, Mental-Health, mental-health-workers, OCD, post-traumatic-stress-disorder, prevent-depression, teach-cognitive-skills

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