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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 »

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In 47 CE, Scri­bo­nius Largus, court physi­cian to the Roman emper­or Claudius, described in his Com­po­si­tiones a method for treat­ing chron­ic migraines: place tor­pe­do fish on the scalps of patients to ease their pain with elec­tric shocks. Largus was on the right path; our brains are com­prised of elec­tri­cal sig­nals that influ­ence how brain cells com­mu­ni­cate with each oth­er and in turn affect cog­ni­tive process­es such as mem­o­ry, emo­tion and atten­tion.

The sci­ence of brain stim­u­la­tion – alter­ing elec­tri­cal sig­nals in the brain – has, need­less to say, changed in the past 2,000 years. Today we have a hand­ful of Read the rest of this entry »

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When writ­ing a song or a piece of prose, I often choose to let my mind wan­der, hop­ing the muse will strike. If it does, it not only moves my work along but feels great, too!

That’s why I was trou­bled by stud­ies that found an asso­ci­a­tion between mind-wan­der­ing and prob­lems like unhap­pi­ness and depression—and even a short­er life expectan­cy. This research sug­gests that focus­ing one’s thoughts on the present moment is linked to well-being, while spac­ing out—which I per­son­al­ly love to do—is not.

Now, new stud­ies are bring­ing nuance to this sci­ence. Read the rest of this entry »