Tracking Health and Wellness Applications of Brain Science

cognition

Study: Actual, sustained practice–not mere knowledge–is needed to harness neuroplasticity and improve cognition over time

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Lifestyle improve­ments may lessen cog­ni­tive decline (Wiley):

” … 19 indi­vid­u­als old­er than 65 years of age who were expe­ri­enc­ing cog­ni­tive decline were ran­dom­ized to a con­trol group or an inter­ven­tion group for 8 weeks. The con­trol group received online infor­ma­tion relat­ed to demen­tia and lifestyle risk fac­tors, Mediter­ranean diet, phys­i­cal activ­i­ty, and cog­ni­tive engage­ment. Par­tic­i­pants were instruct­ed to imple­ment this infor­ma­tion into their own lifestyles. The inter­ven­tion group received the same online infor­ma­tion, plus active com­po­nents to assist with imple­ment­ing this infor­ma­tion into their lifestyles: dietit­ian ses­sions, an exer­cise phys­i­ol­o­gist ses­sion, and online brain train­ing. [Read more…] about Study: Actu­al, sus­tained practice–not mere knowledge–is need­ed to har­ness neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and improve cog­ni­tion over time

Anticholinergic drugs found to significantly increase risk of cognitive decline, especially among those with Alzheimer’s Disease biomarkers or genetic predisposition

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Com­mon Class of Drugs Linked to Increased Risk of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease (UC San Diego release):

A team of sci­en­tists, led by researchers at Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia San Diego School of Med­i­cine, report that a class of drugs used for a broad array of con­di­tions, from aller­gies and colds to hyper­ten­sion and uri­nary incon­ti­nence, may be asso­ci­at­ed with an increased risk of cog­ni­tive decline, par­tic­u­lar­ly in old­er adults at greater risk for Alzheimer’s dis­ease (AD) … cog­ni­tive­ly nor­mal study par­tic­i­pants who were tak­ing at least one anti­cholin­er­gic drug at base­line were 47 per­cent more like­ly to devel­op mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment (MCI), often a pre­cur­sor to demen­tia such as AD, while being tracked over a peri­od of up to a decade com­pared to par­tic­i­pants who did not take such drugs. [Read more…] about Anti­cholin­er­gic drugs found to sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase risk of cog­ni­tive decline, espe­cial­ly among those with Alzheimer’s Dis­ease bio­mark­ers or genet­ic predisposition

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

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– 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

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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

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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)

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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)