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Evi­dence That Com­put­er­ized Cog­ni­tive Train­ing Works (Psy­chol­o­gy Today)

“Many peo­ple use com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive train­ing with the hopes of pre­vent­ing men­tal decline or improv­ing men­tal per­for­mance. But do these brain train­ing games actu­al­ly work?  Read the rest of this entry »

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Dear read­er,

Time for Sharp­Brains month­ly e-newslet­ter, dis­cussing lat­est think­ing, research and tools for life­long brain health and men­tal health.

Enjoy!

New thinking:

• Study finds clear–yet sur­pris­ing­ly different–benefits in 3 types of med­i­ta­tion-based men­tal train­ing
• Tech­nol­o­gy and the Cog­ni­tion Cri­sis
• Think twice before tak­ing Ader­all for cog­ni­tive enhance­ment: It may actu­al­ly impair work­ing mem­o­ry and oth­er cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties

New research:

• Prac­tice effect due to repeat­ed test­ing can delay detec­tion of cog­ni­tive impair­ment and demen­tia
• Meta-analy­sis finds sus­tained ben­e­fits of neu­ro­feed­back for kids with ADHD
• One in eight chil­dren in India aged 2–9 may have neu­rode­vel­op­men­tal dis­or­ders

New tools:

• Per­spec­tive: How brain train­ing games could help patients with Huntington’s dis­ease
• Sanofi Ven­tures leads $17M invest­ment in Click Ther­a­peu­tics, final­ist @ 2017 Brain­no­va­tions Pitch Con­test
• Save the Date for 2018 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit: Invest­ing in Brain Health for All (Decem­ber 4–6th)

Last but not least, we invite you try these 25 brain teasers and games when you have some down­time dur­ing the sum­mer — fas­ci­nat­ing, aren’t they?

Have a great month of August,

The Sharp­Brains Team

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“Our lives on this plan­et have improved in so many amaz­ing ways over the last cen­tu­ry. On aver­age, we are now health­i­er, more afflu­ent and lit­er­ate, less vio­lent and longer liv­ing. Despite these unprece­dent­ed pos­i­tive changes, clear signs exist that we are in the midst of an emerg­ing crisis–one that has not yet been rec­og­nized in its full breadth, even though it lurks just beneath the sur­face of our casu­al con­ver­sa­tions and swims in the under­cur­rents of our news feeds. This is not the well-known cri­sis that we’ve induced upon the earth’s cli­mate, but one that is just as threat­en­ing to our future. This is a cri­sis of our minds. A cog­ni­tion cri­sis Read the rest of this entry »

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How do genet­ics impact ear­ly inter­ven­tion for demen­tia? (Med­ical News Bul­letin):

“Car­dio­vas­cu­lar and neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­eases, such as demen­tia, have been linked to dys­func­tion of a vari­a­tion of the apolipopro­tein E, or APOE, gene, called the APOE e4 allele…The Finnish Geri­atric Inter­ven­tion Study to Pre­vent Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment and Dis­abil­i­ty (FINGER) eval­u­at­ed whether the effec­tive­ness of lifestyle mod­i­fi­ca­tions for those at risk of Alzheimer’s dis­ease would be dif­fer­ent for those with or with­out the APOE e4 gene. Read the rest of this entry »

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New ‘brain health index’ can pre­dict how well patients will do after stroke (Sci­enceDai­ly):

“A new com­put­er pro­gramme devel­oped by sci­en­tists at the Uni­ver­si­ties of Edin­burgh and Glas­gow can assess whole brain dete­ri­o­ra­tion and help pre­dict cog­ni­tive func­tion after stroke up to ten times more accu­rate­ly than cur­rent meth­ods.

The new approach, pub­lished today in the Inter­na­tion­al Jour­nal of Stroke, can quan­ti­fy vis­i­ble brain injury from cere­bral small ves­sel dis­ease (SVD) and brain atro­phy by Read the rest of this entry »