Physical exercise as ADHD treatment: Necessary but not sufficient

— Can exer­cise reduce behav­ior prob­lems and enhance cog­ni­tion in chil­dren with ADHD? Results from mul­ti­ple stud­ies indi­cate that exer­cise mit­i­gates aging-relat­ed declines in cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing and that it may enhance cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing in old­er adults. Exer­cise has also been shown to be 

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Brain training via mindfulness, cognitive training, and/ or tDCS

Sev­er­al recent media arti­cles high­light the grow­ing inter­est in a vari­ety of approach­es to enhance the brain and the mind. The obvi­ous emerg­ing ques­tion, which we address at The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness giv­en that “one size does­n’t fit all” is, what works best for whom and for what? Mind­ful­ness: Get­ting Its Share of Atten­tion (The New York Times):…

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Misuse & Abuse of ADHD Meds among college students: Updated review of a growing concern

The mis­use and abuse of pre­scrip­tion med­ica­tion is a grow­ing con­cern. I remem­ber speak­ing with col­leagues 15–20 years ago as reports about the non­med­ical use of stim­u­lant med­ica­tions used to treat ADHD (non­med­ical use is defined as use by indi­vid­u­als with­out a pre­scrip­tion) were first appear­ing in the media. At the time, these were generally…

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Using Your Head: What is the Future of Brain Health? (Interview Part 1)

Much of health­care deliv­ery has tra­di­tion­al­ly been set-up to deal with a ‘brain­less body’; yet we con­sis­tent­ly com­plain that we can­not change patient and con­sumer behav­iours and main­tain adher­ence to treat­ment pro­grammes. Health­care sys­tems are now recog­nis­ing the lim­its of this mod­el and that there are major ben­e­fits to bet­ter com­pre­hend­ing and engag­ing cog­ni­tive function

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Monitoring cognition via mobile applications: iPad app analyzed

We recent­ly came across a fas­ci­nat­ing sci­en­tif­ic study, titled Exam­in­ing cog­ni­tive func­tion across the lifes­pan using a mobile appli­ca­tion (Com­put­ers in Human Behav­ior), which stud­ied the val­ue and lim­i­ta­tions of using an iPad app called “brain­base­line.” Abstract: “Many stud­ies con­duct­ed in a lab­o­ra­to­ry or uni­ver­si­ty set­ting are lim­it­ed by fund­ing, per­son­nel, space, and time con­straints. In the present…

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