cognitive-function

Ballroom dancing can reduce aging-related brain atrophy in the hippocampus (and, more than treadmill walking!)

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Social ball­room danc­ing can improve cog­ni­tive func­tions and reduce brain atro­phy in old­er adults who are at increased risk for Alzheimer’s dis­ease and oth­er forms of demen­tia. That’s the key find­ing of my team’s recent­ly pub­lished study in the Jour­nal of Aging and Phys­i­cal Activity.

In our study, we enrolled 25 adults over 65 years of age in either six months of twice-week­ly ball­room danc­ing class­es or six months of twice-week­ly tread­mill walk­ing class­es. None of them were engaged in for­mal danc­ing or oth­er exer­cise pro­grams. [Read more…] about Ball­room danc­ing can reduce aging-relat­ed brain atro­phy in the hip­pocam­pus (and, more than tread­mill walking!)

Veterans Affairs won’t cover Biogen’s new “Alzheimer’s drug” given concerns over safety and lack of evidence

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VA Health Sys­tem Won’t Cov­er Biogen’s Alzheimer’s Drug (The Wall Street Journal):

The Depart­ment of Vet­er­ans Affairs won’t cov­er Bio­gen Inc.’s new Alzheimer’s drug, the lat­est rebuke of the con­tro­ver­sial treat­ment since it was approved ear­li­er this summer.

The VA decid­ed not add the drug, called Aduhelm, to its for­mu­la­ry list of avail­able med­i­cines because of the drug’s risk of caus­ing seri­ous side effects and a lack of evi­dence that it improves cog­ni­tive func­tion, an agency spokes­woman said. [Read more…] about Vet­er­ans Affairs won’t cov­er Biogen’s new “Alzheimer’s drug” giv­en con­cerns over safe­ty and lack of evidence

The neuroscience behind why our brains will need time to adjust to ‘un-social distancing’

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With COVID-19 vac­cines work­ing and restric­tions lift­ing across the coun­try, it’s final­ly time for those now vac­ci­nat­ed who’ve been hun­kered down at home to ditch the sweat­pants and reemerge from their Net­flix caves. But your brain may not be so eager to dive back into your for­mer social life. [Read more…] about The neu­ro­science behind why our brains will need time to adjust to ‘un-social distancing’

On centenarians, memory, Mars, tDCS, ADHD, digital health, beautiful brains, and more

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Hen­drik­je van Andel Schip­per (1890–2005)

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing ten time­ly resources and research find­ings for life­long brain and men­tal fitness.

#1. Let’s start with a fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry and study 🙂

Study with 330 cen­te­nar­i­ans finds that cog­ni­tive decline is not inevitable … (Henne Hol­stege, PhD, assis­tant pro­fes­sor at Ams­ter­dam Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical Cen­ter) said her inter­est in research­ing aging and cog­ni­tive health was inspired by the “fas­ci­nat­ing” sto­ry of Hen­drik­je van Andel Schip­per, who died at age 115 in 2005 “com­plete­ly cog­ni­tive­ly healthy.”

#2. Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Lisa Gen­o­va, author of the beau­ti­ful nov­el Still Alice, releas­es non-fic­tion book on Mem­o­ry: “It is sober­ing to real­ize that three out of four pris­on­ers who are lat­er exon­er­at­ed through DNA evi­dence were ini­tial­ly con­vict­ed on the basis of eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny. “You can be 100 per­cent con­fi­dent in your vivid mem­o­ry,” Gen­o­va writes, “and still be 100 per­cent wrong” … Gen­o­va assures her read­ers that only two per cent of Alzheimer’s cas­es are of the strict­ly inher­it­ed, ear­ly-onset kind. For most of us, our chances of devel­op­ing the dis­ease are high­ly amenable to interventions…”

#3. Time­ly tips for the week­end: Shape your envi­ron­ment, shape your mind

  • Sur­round your­self with nature
  • Cre­ate oppor­tu­ni­ties for awe
  • Clear the clutter

#4. “For a mis­sion to suc­ceed, high men­tal and cog­ni­tive func­tion would be absolute­ly crit­i­cal; astro­nauts would be called on to per­form demand­ing tasks in a demand­ing envi­ron­ment. Los­ing 20 IQ points halfway to Mars is not an option … Stress—an emo­tion­al or men­tal state result­ing from tense or over­whelm­ing circumstances—and the body’s response to it, which involves mul­ti­ple sys­tems, from metab­o­lism to mus­cles to memory—may be the chief chal­lenge that astro­nauts face.” Next in NASA’s path to Mars: Over­com­ing astro­nauts’ cog­ni­tive and men­tal health challenges

#5. Study: Depres­sion affects visu­al per­cep­tion … mak­ing it more accu­rate (based on a cool opti­cal illusion)

#6. It’s good to have more tools in the neu­ro toolkit…assuming we use them wise­ly: Emerg­ing appli­ca­tions of tran­scra­nial Direct Cur­rent Stim­u­la­tion (tDCS): e‑sports skills train­ing, cog­ni­tive enhance­ment in old­er adults

#7. Does ADHD treat­ment enable long-term aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess? (Yes, espe­cial­ly when phar­ma­co­log­i­cal and non-phar­ma treat­ments are combined)

#8. Men­tal Health in the Dig­i­tal Age: From dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics to per­son­al­ized men­tal health solu­tions: Pear Ther­a­peu­tics expands plat­form via part­ner­ships with Empat­i­ca, etec­tRx, Key­Wise, and Winterlight

#9. The award was won last year by Indi­an vil­lage teacher Ran­jitsinh Disale; who will be next? Final day to nom­i­nate teach­ers for the $1M Glob­al Teacher Prize 2021

#10. And last, but cer­tain­ly not least, let’s wel­come Men­tal Health Month (May) by appre­ci­at­ing our beau­ti­ful brains

Wish­ing you a men­tal­ly healthy and cog­ni­tive­ly stim­u­lat­ing month of May,

The Sharp­Brains Team

Study: Over-the-counter “brain enhancement” supplements in the US found both to a) contain multiple unapproved drugs and b) lack some ingredients listed on the label

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Study: Your Brain Sup­ple­ments Could Con­tain Dan­ger­ous, Ille­gal Ingre­di­ents (Being Patient):

Brain sup­ple­ments that claim to boost cog­ni­tive func­tion are increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar, grow­ing from a $4 bil­lion indus­try of about 4,000 unique prod­ucts to a $40 bil­lion indus­try with as many as 80,000 dif­fer­ent prod­ucts on the mar­ket. [Read more…] about Study: Over-the-counter “brain enhance­ment” sup­ple­ments in the US found both to a) con­tain mul­ti­ple unap­proved drugs and b) lack some ingre­di­ents list­ed on the label

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”