Study: Playing board games like Chess, Mahjong, Go, helps slow cognitive decline as we age (but with clear differences in neurobiology and improved function)

Play­ing Board Games May Slow Cog­ni­tive Decline, Improve QoL (Med­scape): Play­ing chess or oth­er board games slows cog­ni­tive decline and improves qual­i­ty of life in old­er patients, results of a new sys­tem­at­ic review sug­gest. … After search­ing the pub­lished lit­er­a­ture, Pozzi and his col­leagues select­ed 15 stud­ies for the review. The stud­ies assessed the impact…

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Pilot program by IU and Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative to test AI-powered cognitive screening at scale

How AI, Dig­i­tal Screen­ing Tools Can Help Flag Ear­ly Cog­ni­tive Decline (Health IT Ana­lyt­ics): Ear­ly diag­no­sis of Alzheimer’s and oth­er demen­tias remains at the fore­front of efforts to min­i­mize the impact of these neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases. But chal­lenges such as increased life expectan­cy and the risks of aging, along with com­plex­i­ties in diag­no­sis and treat­ment resulting…

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Digital therapeutics pioneer Akili Interactive Labs goes public, raising $150M+; trades down 49% first day

Akili Inter­ac­tive is the lat­est com­pa­ny to go pub­lic via SPAC deal (Boston Busi­ness Jour­nal): Boston’s Akili Inter­ac­tive Labs Inc. is the lat­est Mass­a­chu­setts-based com­pa­ny to go pub­lic after com­plet­ing a reverse merg­er — in a year of mar­ket tur­moil that saw few local firms pass­ing the thresh­old between pri­vate and pub­lic sta­tus. Shares of…

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Deep learning model built on neuroimaging data identifies “Brain Age Gaps” as markers of Alzheimer’s disease (AD)

Brain Age Gap is a Com­pos­ite Bio­mark­er for Demen­tia Pathol­o­gy or Sever­i­ty (GEN): Mayo Clin­ic sci­en­tists have devel­oped a com­pu­ta­tion­al mod­el that pre­dicts brain age using a large col­lec­tion of neu­roimag­ing data obtained using FDG-PET (flu­o­rodeoxyglu­cose positron emis­sion tomog­ra­phy) and struc­tur­al MRI (mag­net­ic res­o­nance imag­ing). The deep learn­ing-based mod­el tests the rela­tion­ship between brain age…

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New book provides practical guidance for women (and men) to rebalance our lifestyles and build Cognitive Reserve

On one of our “walk and talks” around the lush trails of Rock Creek Park in DC sur­round­ed by bik­ers, run­ners, cars and the occa­sion­al deer, Wendy and Lisa talked about aging. Wendy’s moth­er, who had her chil­dren in her ear­ly 20s, was still join­ing the family’s gru­el­ing sum­mer hikes with her chil­dren and nine…

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Geisinger and Eisai to test real-world validity of AI-powered Passive Digital Marker (PDM) in detecting early cognitive impairment and dementia

Research col­lab­o­ra­tion will test nov­el algorithm’s effec­tive­ness on Geisinger data (press release): Geisinger and Eisai Inc. today announced a col­lab­o­ra­tive effort to study the poten­tial effec­tive­ness of an arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) tool in the detec­tion of cog­ni­tive impair­ment that could iden­ti­fy demen­tias, includ­ing Alzheimer’s dis­ease (AD). If effec­tive, the AI tool could poten­tial­ly be developed…

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