Tracking Health and Wellness Applications of Brain Science

cognitive-reserve

The latest on Brain Health and Resilience, plus a few fun Brain Teasers

by Leave a Comment

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing fas­ci­nat­ing neu­ro­science find­ings and tips, com­bined with fun brain teasers.

#1. To cel­e­brate this quite-chal­leng­ing Thanks­giv­ing, here are five fun brain teasers that read­ers have enjoyed the most this year so far. It is always good to learn more about (and appre­ci­ate) that most pre­cious resource we all (yes, all) have up there! Five fun brain teasers to thank evo­lu­tion for our human brains and minds

#2. Want more? Ready, Set, Go! A few brain teasers to flex those cog­ni­tive muscles

#3. “[Breath­ing tech­niques] are allow­ing you to con­scious­ly take con­trol of your breath­ing so you can take con­trol of your ner­vous sys­tem so you can take con­trol of your anx­i­ety” — James Nestor, author of Breath: The New Sci­ence of a Lost Art. New book shares sci­ence and tech­niques to breathe bet­ter and pro­mote calm­ness not anxiety

#4. Voice does matter…especially in areas of poten­tial dis­agree­ment. To call, or to text, that is the (men­tal well-being) question

#5. Fas­ci­nat­ing research + inno­va­tion event brought by the Euro­pean Insti­tute of Inno­va­tion & Tech­nol­o­gy (EIT) and mul­ti­ple part­ners. Save the Date: Pro­mot­ing Brain Health for Life, Decem­ber 15–16th, online.

#6. “This isn’t a bat­tle between AI and doc­tors, it’s about how to opti­mize doc­tors’ abil­i­ty to deliv­er bet­ter care” — P. Murali Doraiswamy, direc­tor of the Neu­rocog­ni­tive Dis­or­ders Pro­gram at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty. Next: Ana­lyz­ing typ­ing speed, speech and sleep pat­terns to iden­ti­fy cog­ni­tive decline, demen­tia, Parkinson’s, and more

#7. Google’s X team shares 3 valu­able lessons learned from their ambi­tious and (for the time being) unsuc­cess­ful moon­shot: Alphabet’s X shares Amber EEG sys­tem to expand the quest for men­tal health biomarkers

#8. “An exer­cise pre­scrip­tion is an impor­tant treat­ment option and a great adjunct to med­ica­tions. The key is pre­scrib­ing phys­i­cal activ­i­ty in a way that the patient will com­ply and remain engaged with.” Debate: How should doc­tors pre­scribe exer­cise to ensure com­pli­ance and engagement?

#9. As the study authors note, “The expan­sion of women into the labor force in the mid-20th cen­tu­ry may have pro­vid­ed a new avenue of cog­ni­tive reserve for women via enhanced social stim­u­la­tion and cog­ni­tive engage­ment.” Study: Work in adult­hood seen to sig­nif­i­cant­ly delay mem­o­ry decline after age 60, sup­port­ing the Cog­ni­tive Reserve theory

#10. “Through­out many sub­red­dits, we found sig­nif­i­cant increas­es in the use of tokens relat­ed to iso­la­tion (eg, “lone­ly,” “can’t see any­one,” “quar­an­tine”), eco­nom­ic stress (eg, “rent,” “debt,” “pay the bills”), and home (“fridge,” “pet,” “lease”), and a decrease in the lex­i­con relat­ed to motion (eg, “walk,” “vis­it,” “trav­el”).” Hope­ful­ly the promis­ing vac­cine news helps turn the tide; until then we need to pro­mote men­tal health & resilience hard. Using Red­dit as a pop­u­la­tion-lev­el “men­tal health track­er” dur­ing the COVID pandemic

#11. “BCI devices can be non-inva­sive devices that users wear, or they can be inva­sive devices, which are sur­gi­cal­ly implant­ed,” says Veljko Dublje­vi … “The inva­sive devices are more effi­cient, since they can read sig­nals direct­ly from the brain. How­ev­er, they also raise more eth­i­cal con­cerns. For exam­ple, inva­sive BCI tech­nolo­gies car­ry more asso­ci­at­ed risks such as surgery, infec­tion, and glial scar­ring — and inva­sive BCI devices would be more dif­fi­cult to replace as tech­nol­o­gy improves.” Stud­ies iden­ti­fy key eth­i­cal con­cerns raised by inva­sive and non-inva­sive neurotechnologies

#12. “(the app) uses the Watch’s sen­sors to track the heart rate and move­ment of users as they sleep. After estab­lish­ing a base­line pro­file for the patient with­in one or two nights’ sleep, the machine learn­ing algo­rithm spots heart rate or move­ment abnor­mal­i­ties pre­sum­ably caused by a night­mare. The appli­ca­tion then vibrates the smart­watch just enough to inter­rupt the wearer’s dream­ing, but not enough to wake them up or dis­rupt their cir­ca­di­an sleep cycle.” FDA grants clear­ance for Night­Ware app designed to reduce PTSD-relat­ed nightmares

 

Wish­ing you a safe and healthy December,

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez and the Sharp­Brains Team

 

Study: High Cognitive Reserve (CR) seen to significantly lower dementia risk even in the presence of high Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) neuropathology

by

Fig­ure 2. Inci­dence Rates of Demen­tia per 1000 Per­son-Years by Cog­ni­tive Reserve (CR) Ter­tile and Brain Pathol­o­gy; adjust­ed for age, sex, smok­ing, alco­hol con­sump­tion, phys­i­cal activ­i­ty, body mass index, heart dis­ease, hyper­ten­sion, cere­brovas­cu­lar dis­ease, dia­betes, and apolipopro­tein E e4. AD indi­cates Alzheimer dis­ease. Source: Xu H et al (2020)

Lifes­pan Cog­ni­tive Reserve—A Secret to Cop­ing With Neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive Pathol­o­gy (JAMA Neu­rol­o­gy editorial):

Giv­en the lim­it­ed suc­cess of ther­a­peu­tic inter­ven­tions for Alzheimer dis­ease, there is increased inter­est in under­stand­ing whether mod­i­fi­able fac­tors can help cope with or post­pone the appear­ance of brain pathol­o­gy. It is esti­mat­ed that about 35% of Alzheimer risk is mod­i­fi­able. Epi­demi­o­log­ic stud­ies have shown that life­time expo­sures to high­er edu­ca­tion, high­er occu­pa­tion­al attain­ment, and cog­ni­tive­ly stim­u­lat­ing activ­i­ties are asso­ci­at­ed with reduced risk of Alzheimer demen­tia. Autop­sy stud­ies have shown interindi­vid­ual dif­fer­ences in the amount of brain pathol­o­gy peo­ple can tol­er­ate before man­i­fest­ing cog­ni­tive impair­ments, and autop­sied brains of about one-third of indi­vid­u­als who are cog­ni­tive­ly nor­mal meet neu­ropatho­log­i­cal cri­te­ria for Alzheimer dis­ease. [Read more…] about Study: High Cog­ni­tive Reserve (CR) seen to sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er demen­tia risk even in the pres­ence of high Alzheimer’s Dis­ease (AD) neuropathology

Study: For better memory and thinking skills at age 70 (and beyond), play cards and board games from age 11

by

___

Cards, board games could ward off cog­ni­tive decline (UPI):

“Play­ing cards and board games like chess, bin­go and Scrab­ble might be the men­tal work­out you need to keep your wits as you age, Scot­tish researchers suggest.

Peo­ple in their 70s who reg­u­lar­ly play board games score high­er on tests of mem­o­ry and think­ing skills than those who don’t. And 70-some­things who step up their game-play­ing are more like­ly to main­tain think­ing skills as they age [Read more…] about Study: For bet­ter mem­o­ry and think­ing skills at age 70 (and beyond), play cards and board games from age 11

With pharma exiting Alzheimer’s research, new hope (and urgency) seen in the combination of brain training and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS)

by

___

What does the future hold for the war on Alzheimer’s? (The Globe and Mail):

“After spend­ing huge sums on clin­i­cal trails in recent years, the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try has failed to find a drug that can halt the mind-rob­bing dis­ease. And this month, Pfiz­er announced it is end­ing its Alzheimer’s research, although oth­er com­pa­nies haven’t thrown in the tow­el yet. But oth­er pre­ven­tion mea­sures are being explored.

Sev­er­al Toron­to hos­pi­tals are involved in an ambi­tious $10-mil­lion, five-year study to deter­mine whether a com­bi­na­tion of cog­ni­tive reme­di­a­tion – men­tal exer­cis­es – plus elec­tri­cal stim­u­la­tion of the brain can delay [Read more…] about With phar­ma exit­ing Alzheimer’s research, new hope (and urgency) seen in the com­bi­na­tion of brain train­ing and tran­scra­nial direct cur­rent stim­u­la­tion (tDCS)

New studies reinforce Education and Cognitive Reserve –instead of drugs targeting beta amyloid– as most promising avenue to prolong cognitive health and reduce dementia risk

by

dementia-progressionDemen­tia Risk Declines, And Edu­ca­tion May Be One Rea­son Why (NPR):

“Some encour­ag­ing news in the bat­tle against Alzheimer’s dis­ease and oth­er forms of demen­tia: The rate at which old­er Amer­i­cans are get­ting these con­di­tions is declin­ing. That’s accord­ing to [Read more…] about New stud­ies rein­force Edu­ca­tion and Cog­ni­tive Reserve –instead of drugs tar­get­ing beta amy­loid– as most promis­ing avenue to pro­long cog­ni­tive health and reduce demen­tia risk