cognition

Five ways to clear foggy brains and improve cognitive well-being

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The oth­er day, my friend Kristi­na told me that one evening she unin­ten­tion­al­ly locked her hus­band in a down­stairs part of their house. She had known he was down there, but while dis­tract­ed­ly lock­ing the door for the night, for­got com­plete­ly. She didn’t real­ize what she’d done until she saw a text from her hus­band the next morn­ing ask­ing her to please let him out.

“I couldn’t believe I did that to him,” she says. “I was stunned and alarmed that I had no aware­ness, in the moment or after­ward, of what I had done.” [Read more…] about Five ways to clear fog­gy brains and improve cog­ni­tive well-being

Complex occupations help protect our brains from aging-related cognitive decline

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Cog­ni­tive aging: Work helps our brain (AAAS):

A recent study shows that work plays an active role in keep­ing our brains healthy. “We have demon­strat­ed the role of work­ing activ­i­ty on cog­ni­tive per­for­mance”. Pro­fes­sor Raf­fael­la Rumiati says … “Many stud­ies have been focused on the fac­tors influ­enc­ing our brain aging and dif­fer­ences in cog­ni­tive decline have been often observed in asso­ci­a­tion with edu­ca­tion or oth­er relat­ed to qual­i­ty of life. From our analy­sis it emerges that the type of work activ­i­ty also con­tributes to the dif­fer­ences in nor­mal and patho­log­i­cal cog­ni­tive aging”. [Read more…] about Com­plex occu­pa­tions help pro­tect our brains from aging-relat­ed cog­ni­tive decline

Rationality doesn’t equal efficiency: Cellphone data shows how we navigate cities

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The paths peo­ple take are record­ed by their cell­phones. Anony­mous data from thou­sands of phones shows the paths peo­ple take in Boston (above) and San Fran­cis­co (below). Car­lo Rat­ti, CC BY-ND

Think of your morn­ing walk to work, school or your favorite cof­fee shop. Are you tak­ing the short­est pos­si­ble route to your des­ti­na­tion? Accord­ing to big data research that my col­leagues and I con­duct­ed, the answer is no: People’s brains are not wired for opti­mal navigation.

Instead of cal­cu­lat­ing the short­est path, peo­ple try to point straight toward their des­ti­na­tions – we call it the “pointi­est path” – even if it is not the most effi­cient way to walk. [Read more…] about Ratio­nal­i­ty doesn’t equal effi­cien­cy: Cell­phone data shows how we nav­i­gate cities

Study in China finds that retirement may accelerate cognitive decline, even for those with stable income

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Peo­ple who retire ear­ly suf­fer from accel­er­at­ed cog­ni­tive decline and may even encounter ear­ly onset of demen­tia, accord­ing to a new eco­nom­ic study (Note: opens PDF) I con­duct­ed with my doc­tor­al stu­dent Alan Adelman.

To estab­lish that find­ing, we exam­ined the effects of a rur­al pen­sion pro­gram Chi­na intro­duced in 2009 that pro­vid­ed peo­ple who par­tic­i­pat­ed with a sta­ble income if they stopped work­ing after the offi­cial retire­ment age of 60. We found that peo­ple who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the pro­gram and retired with­in one or two years expe­ri­enced a cog­ni­tive decline equiv­a­lent to a drop in gen­er­al intel­li­gence of 1.7% rel­a­tive to the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion. This drop is equiv­a­lent to about three IQ points and could make it hard­er for some­one to adhere to a med­ica­tion sched­ule or con­duct finan­cial plan­ning. The largest neg­a­tive effect was in what is called “delayed recall,” which mea­sures a person’s abil­i­ty to remem­ber some­thing men­tioned sev­er­al min­utes ago. Neu­ro­log­i­cal research links prob­lems in this area to an ear­ly onset of demen­tia. [Read more…] about Study in Chi­na finds that retire­ment may accel­er­ate cog­ni­tive decline, even for those with sta­ble income

Debate: Are depression and dementia two sides of the same coin? And, if they are, how to best approach treatment?

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Every sev­en sec­onds, some­one in the world is diag­nosed with demen­tia. A typ­i­cal case that I often see in my prac­tice is as fol­lows: A 76-year-old woman has a two-year his­to­ry of pro­gres­sive wors­en­ing of short-term mem­o­ry and cog­ni­tive decline. She can’t recall the names of her grand­chil­dren and is dev­as­tat­ed by her dete­ri­o­rat­ing abilities.

How­ev­er, this is not the first time in her life that she has had feel­ings of loss and despair. Over the past 30 years, she has inter­mit­tent­ly strug­gled with depres­sion and anx­i­ety. Her fam­i­ly has many ques­tions: Does she have demen­tia or Alzheimer’s? Could her depres­sion have led to a demen­tia diag­no­sis? Is it only depres­sion and not demen­tia? These are all good ques­tions and the col­lec­tive answer to them is “yes.” [Read more…] about Debate: Are depres­sion and demen­tia two sides of the same coin? And, if they are, how to best approach treatment?

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