cognitive-skills

Systematic review calls for early targeted interventions to help babies and toddlers with cerebral palsy harness time window with maximum brain plasticity

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Ear­ly tar­get­ed inter­ven­tion ‘crit­i­cal’ for improv­ing out­comes in cere­bral pal­sy (Healio):

Ear­ly inter­ven­tion for chil­dren with or at high risk for cere­bral pal­sy should begin “as soon as pos­si­ble” in order to build on “a crit­i­cal devel­op­men­tal time,” accord­ing to results of a sys­tem­at­ic review pub­lished in JAMA Pedi­atrics. [Read more…] about Sys­tem­at­ic review calls for ear­ly tar­get­ed inter­ven­tions to help babies and tod­dlers with cere­bral pal­sy har­ness time win­dow with max­i­mum brain plasticity

Study in China finds that retirement may accelerate cognitive decline, even for those with stable income

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Peo­ple who retire ear­ly suf­fer from accel­er­at­ed cog­ni­tive decline and may even encounter ear­ly onset of demen­tia, accord­ing to a new eco­nom­ic study (Note: opens PDF) I con­duct­ed with my doc­tor­al stu­dent Alan Adelman.

To estab­lish that find­ing, we exam­ined the effects of a rur­al pen­sion pro­gram Chi­na intro­duced in 2009 that pro­vid­ed peo­ple who par­tic­i­pat­ed with a sta­ble income if they stopped work­ing after the offi­cial retire­ment age of 60. We found that peo­ple who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the pro­gram and retired with­in one or two years expe­ri­enced a cog­ni­tive decline equiv­a­lent to a drop in gen­er­al intel­li­gence of 1.7% rel­a­tive to the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion. This drop is equiv­a­lent to about three IQ points and could make it hard­er for some­one to adhere to a med­ica­tion sched­ule or con­duct finan­cial plan­ning. The largest neg­a­tive effect was in what is called “delayed recall,” which mea­sures a person’s abil­i­ty to remem­ber some­thing men­tioned sev­er­al min­utes ago. Neu­ro­log­i­cal research links prob­lems in this area to an ear­ly onset of demen­tia. [Read more…] about Study in Chi­na finds that retire­ment may accel­er­ate cog­ni­tive decline, even for those with sta­ble income

DARPA-funded nonsurgical neurotechnologies push the frontier of brain-machine interfaces

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Cred­it: J Robin­son and Rice University

Rice Uni­ver­si­ty Charges Into the Future with Mag­net­ics and Bioim­plants (All About Circuits):

Advances in self-gen­er­at­ing drug deliv­ery sys­tems, brain-to-brain com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and injury mit­i­ga­tion tech­nolo­gies are just some of the newest research com­ing down the pipeline from Rice University.

Sev­er­al research projects fund­ed by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agen­cy’s (DARPA) N3 pro­gram might her­ald a future of high­ly advanced human-machine inter­fac­ing that expands the capa­bil­i­ties of sol­diers and first respon­ders. [Read more…] about DARPA-fund­ed non­sur­gi­cal neu­rotech­nolo­gies push the fron­tier of brain-machine interfaces

Five brain teasers to celebrate Brain Awareness Week 2021

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Brain Aware­ness Week 2021 just start­ed. Let’s cel­e­brate by chal­leng­ing our minds with a few fun brain teasers and illusions 🙂

Here’s a selec­tion of five stim­u­lat­ing brain teasers that read­ers enjoyed the most so far in 2021:

  1. Where’s the baby? And a cou­ple oth­er sur­pris­ing illusions
  2. Please com­plete these proverbs to exer­cise your brain in famil­iar and nov­el ways
  3. Can you con­nect these pairs of words?
  4. Ready to test your stress level?
  5. Which way is the bus head­ing?

About Brain Awareness Week:

Every March, Brain Aware­ness Week (BAW) unites the efforts of part­ner orga­ni­za­tions world­wide in a cel­e­bra­tion of the brain for peo­ple of all ages. Activ­i­ties are lim­it­ed only by the orga­niz­ers’ imag­i­na­tions and include open days at neu­ro­science labs; exhi­bi­tions about the brain; lec­tures on brain-relat­ed top­ics; social media cam­paigns; dis­plays at libraries and com­mu­ni­ty cen­ters; class­room work­shops; and more. This year BAW takes place March 15–21st, 2021.

If you’re a fruit fly, tease your mind with this optical illusion. Humans welcome too.

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Rotat­ing snake illu­sion. Cred­it: Akiyoshi Kitaoka

Please move your gaze around the image, rest­ing from time to time.

Then, fix your gaze at a point, and see what happens.

You will prob­a­bly first see ‘snakes’ rotat­ing, some clock­wise, oth­ers anti­clock­wise, and then stop. [Read more…] about If you’re a fruit fly, tease your mind with this opti­cal illu­sion. Humans wel­come too.

Given cognitive strengths and needs are diverse, what brain training may work best for each person and under which conditions?

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Does ‘Brain Train­ing’ Actu­al­ly Work? (Sci­en­tif­ic American):

If there were an app on your phone that could improve your mem­o­ry, would you try it? Who wouldn’t want a bet­ter mem­o­ry? After all, our rec­ol­lec­tions are frag­ile and can be impaired by dis­eases, injuries, men­tal health con­di­tions and, most acute­ly for all of us, aging. [Read more…] about Giv­en cog­ni­tive strengths and needs are diverse, what brain train­ing may work best for each per­son and under which conditions?