A lead­ing group of med­ical experts on Tues­day declined to endorse cog­ni­tive screen­ing for old­er adults, fuel­ing a debate that has sim­mered for years.

The U.S. Pre­ven­tive Ser­vices Task Force said it could nei­ther rec­om­mend nor oppose cog­ni­tive screen­ing, cit­ing insuf­fi­cient sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence of the practice’s ben­e­fits and harms and call­ing for fur­ther stud­ies.

The task force’s work informs poli­cies set by Medicare and pri­vate insur­ers. Its rec­om­men­da­tions, an accom­pa­ny­ing sci­en­tif­ic state­ment and two edi­to­ri­als were pub­lished Tues­day in the Jour­nal of the Amer­i­can Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion.

The task force’s new posi­tion comes as con­cern mounts over a ris­ing tide of old­er adults with Alzheimer’s dis­ease and Read the rest of this entry »

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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 the rest of this entry »

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While sit­ting at din­ner with an unsus­pect­ing friend, my phone blew up with odd­ly-late mes­sages from fel­low neu­rotech­nol­o­gy com­rades. CTRL-Labs announced their impend­ing acqui­si­tion by Face­book and inte­gra­tion into Face­book Real­i­ty Labs (respon­si­ble for Ocu­lus et al.), for enough mon­ey to buy my guilt-induc­ing­ly-expen­sive New York cof­fee for a mea­ger 550,000 years. Woah—so very many ques­tions. I fig­ured I’d share Read the rest of this entry »

Necrop­oli Grot­ti­cel­li, the tomb of Archimedes in Syra­cuse

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Greek math­e­mati­cian, physi­cist, engi­neer, inven­tor, and astronomer Archimedes made many great sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­er­ies through­out his life. He explained why and how bod­ies float in the water, designed mir­ror arrays capa­ble of focus­ing sun rays and set­ting ene­my ships on fire, found the way of approx­i­mat­ing the num­ber of grains of sand that will fit inside the uni­verse.

Now to the brain teas­er part.

His tomb was dec­o­rat­ed with his favorite dis­cov­ery. Which one of the fol­low­ing three sculp­tures was hon­or­ing Archimedes, and why?

1. A gold­en crown com­mem­o­rat­ing his famous Eure­ka moment in the bath
2. A lever with which he promised one could move the Earth
3. A sim­ple cylin­der and a sphere

The puz­zle answer is below. Please think about it before check­ing it out… Read the rest of this entry »

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Online brain games can extend in-game ‘cog­ni­tive youth’ into old age (Sci­ence News):

“A Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Irvine-led study has found that online brain game exer­cis­es can enable peo­ple in their 70s and even 80s to mul­ti­task cog­ni­tive­ly as well as indi­vid­u­als 50 years their junior. This is an increas­ing­ly valu­able skill, giv­en today’s dai­ly infor­ma­tion onslaught, which can divide atten­tion and be par­tic­u­lar­ly tax­ing for old­er adults Read the rest of this entry »