Tracking Health and Wellness Applications of Brain Science

cognitive-functioning

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

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)

Does music facilitate or impair cognitive task performance? It depends…

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Does Music Boost Your Cog­ni­tive Per­for­mance? (Sci­en­tif­ic American):

“Music makes life bet­ter in so many ways. It ele­vates mood, reduces stress and eas­es pain. Music is heart-healthy, because it can low­er blood pres­sure, reduce heart rate and decrease stress hor­mones in the blood. It also con­nects us with oth­ers and enhances social bonds. Music can even improve work­out endurance and increase our enjoy­ment of chal­leng­ing activ­i­ties [Read more…] about Does music facil­i­tate or impair cog­ni­tive task per­for­mance? It depends…

Do ADHD drugs really help college students without ADHD?

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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. [Read more…] about Do ADHD drugs real­ly help col­lege stu­dents with­out ADHD?

Study shows how online mindfulness interventions can reduce work-related rumination and fatigue, and improve sleep quality

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Work these days often comes with long hours, emo­tion­al­ly drain­ing col­leagues, and com­plex prob­lems that require an enor­mous amount of men­tal ener­gy. So it’s no sur­prise that many of us have a hard time leav­ing work-relat­ed thoughts at the office.

“Sur­veys have shown that between 16 and 25 per­cent of the work­force have reg­u­lar issues of not being able to switch off and are upset or dis­tressed by work-relat­ed thoughts,” says Mark Crop­ley, a pro­fes­sor of health psy­chol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Sur­rey. That can lead to a host of men­tal and phys­i­cal health issues, includ­ing dif­fi­cul­ty focus­ing and depres­sion. [Read more…] about Study shows how online mind­ful­ness inter­ven­tions can reduce work-relat­ed rumi­na­tion and fatigue, and improve sleep quality

Large study highlights the cognitive enhancement value of both higher education and lifelong learning

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Cour­tesy David Lee at The Dai­ly Californian

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UC Berke­ley study links cog­ni­tive longevi­ty to high­er edu­ca­tion (The Dai­ly Californian):

“A study led by cam­pus researchers found that high­er lev­els of edu­ca­tion are linked to lat­er ages of peak cog­ni­tive performance…The team was able to use anony­mous data gath­ered from almost 200,000 sub­scribers to Lumos­i­ty, an online cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­gram, whose users con­sent­ed that their results could be used for sci­en­tif­ic research. [Read more…] about Large study high­lights the cog­ni­tive enhance­ment val­ue of both high­er edu­ca­tion and life­long learning