Tracking Health and Wellness Applications of Brain Science

cognition

Brain scans show lower accumulation of tau and amyloid pathology among cognitive “super-agers”

by Leave a Comment

– Tau (blue) and amy­loid (orange) dis­tri­b­u­tion pat­terns for super-agers, nor­mal-agers and MCI patients, when com­pared to a group of younger, healthy, cog­ni­tive­ly nor­mal, amy­loid-neg­a­tive indi­vid­u­als. Cred­it: Mer­le C. Hoenig.

Super-Agers Show Resis­tance to Tau and Amy­loid Accu­mu­la­tion, Main­tain High Cog­ni­tive Func­tion (Soci­ety of Nuclear Med­i­cine and Mol­e­c­u­lar Imag­ing press release):

Super-agers, or indi­vid­u­als whose cog­ni­tive skills are above the norm even at an advanced age, have been found to have increased resis­tance to tau and amy­loid pro­teins, accord­ing to research pre­sent­ed at the Soci­ety of Nuclear Med­i­cine and Mol­e­c­u­lar Imag­ing (SNMMI) 2020 Annu­al Meet­ing. An analy­sis of positron emis­sion tomog­ra­phy (PET) scans has shown that com­pared to nor­mal-agers and those with mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment, super-agers have a low­er bur­den of tau and amy­loid pathol­o­gy asso­ci­at­ed with neu­rode­gen­er­a­tion, which prob­a­bly allows them to main­tain their cog­ni­tive per­for­mance. An image show­ing the com­par­i­son of tau and amy­loid dis­tri­b­u­tion pat­terns in these dif­fer­ent cog­ni­tive aging tra­jec­to­ries has been select­ed as SNMMI’s 2020 Image of the Year. [Read more…] about Brain scans show low­er accu­mu­la­tion of tau and amy­loid pathol­o­gy among cog­ni­tive “super-agers”

Three quick brain teasers to exercise your working memory

by Leave a Comment

Draw the let­ter J in your mind.

Now draw the let­ter D. Turn it 90 degrees to the left and put it in top of the J.

What does this shape resem­ble? [Read more…] about Three quick brain teasers to exer­cise your work­ing mem­o­ry

Study: Antidepressant vortioxetine combined with cognitive training may help delay cognitive decline

by Leave a Comment

Can Phar­ma­co­log­i­cal Aug­men­ta­tion of Cog­ni­tive Train­ing Reme­di­ate Age-Relat­ed Cog­ni­tive Decline? (The Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Psy­chi­a­try):

A grad­ual decline of cog­ni­tive func­tion and con­cur­rent loss of brain vol­ume is an expect­ed process even in healthy aging. What if, how­ev­er, this process could be delayed, reversed, or even pre­vent­ed? This ques­tion has become increas­ing­ly rel­e­vant as the aver­age expect­ed lifes­pan ris­es. Indeed, the num­ber of Amer­i­cans over age 65 is expect­ed to more than dou­ble from 40 mil­lion in 2010 to 89 mil­lion in 2050.

[Read more…] about Study: Anti­de­pres­sant vor­tiox­e­tine com­bined with cog­ni­tive train­ing may help delay cog­ni­tive decline

Study finds mixed results of Adderall as cognitive enhancer (seems to boost emotion more than cognition)

by Leave a Comment

__

Over the past 15 years there has been grow­ing aware­ness that many col­lege stu­dents with­out an ADHD diag­no­sis use ADHD drugs. On some cam­pus­es, rates of self-report­ed non-med­ical use have exceed­ed 30% of stu­dents.

The pri­ma­ry rea­son stu­dents report tak­ing ADHD drugs is to enhance their aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance. And, the strong major­i­ty of stu­dents — over 80% in a study I con­duct­ed — believe it is help­ful for this pur­pose.

Fur­ther­more, stu­dents who report prob­lems with atten­tion are more like­ly to report non-med­ical use than oth­er stu­dents; this sug­gests that some self-med­icate to address their per­ceived atten­tion dif­fi­cul­ties. [Read more…] about Study finds mixed results of Adder­all as cog­ni­tive enhancer (seems to boost emo­tion more than cog­ni­tion)

The frontal lobes, the little brain down under and “Stayin’ Alive” (3/3)

by Leave a Comment

__

[Editor’s note: Con­tin­ued from Explor­ing the human brain and how it responds to stress (1/3) and On World Health Day 2020, let’s dis­cuss the stress response and the Gen­er­al Adap­ta­tion Syn­drome (2/3)]

More on the Cor­tex, the Lim­bic Sys­tem, and Stress:

The cor­tex is made up of four major sec­tions, arranged from the front to the back. These are called the frontal, pari­etal, occip­i­tal, and tem­po­ral lobes. Each of the four lobes is found in both hemi­spheres, and each is respon­si­ble for dif­fer­ent, spe­cial­ized cog­ni­tive func­tions. For exam­ple, the occip­i­tal lobe con­tains the pri­ma­ry visu­al cor­tex, and the tem­po­ral lobe (locat­ed by the tem­ples, and close to the ears) con­tains the pri­ma­ry audi­to­ry cor­tex.

The frontal lobes are posi­tioned at the front most region of the cere­bral cor­tex and are involved in move­ment, deci­sion mak­ing, prob­lem solv­ing, and plan­ning. There are [Read more…] about The frontal lobes, the lit­tle brain down under and “Stayin’ Alive” (3/3)

On World Health Day 2020, let’s discuss the stress response and the General Adaptation Syndrome (2/3)

by Leave a Comment

The hypothalamus–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis acts to release cor­ti­sol into the blood stream, as cor­ti­sol calls the body into action to com­bat stress. When high amounts of cor­ti­sol inter­act with the hypo­thal­a­mus, the HPA axis will slow down its activ­i­ty. The amyg­dala detects stress, while the pre­frontal cor­tex reg­u­lates our reac­tions to stress. Source: Bezdek K and Telz­er E (2017) Have No Fear, the Brain is Here! How Your Brain Responds to Stress. Front. Young Minds. 5:71. doi: 10.3389/frym.2017.00071

_______

[Editor’s note: Con­tin­ued from yes­ter­day’s Explor­ing the human brain and how it responds to stress (1/3)]

Stress was put on the map, so to speak, by a Hun­gar­i­an — born Cana­di­an endocri­nol­o­gist named Hans Hugo Bruno Selye (ZEL — yeh) in 1950, when he pre­sent­ed his research on rats at the annu­al con­ven­tion of the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion. To explain the impact of stress, Selye pro­posed some­thing he called the Gen­er­al Adap­ta­tion Syn­drome (GAS), which he said had three com­po­nents. Accord­ing to Selye, when an organ­ism expe­ri­ences some nov­el or threat­en­ing stim­u­lus it responds with [Read more…] about On World Health Day 2020, let’s dis­cuss the stress response and the Gen­er­al Adap­ta­tion Syn­drome (2/3)