A few slow-paced breaths are enough to significantly reduce physiological stress

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, shar­ing impor­tant brain & men­tal health news plus a cou­ple fun brain teasers to test your men­tal self-rota­­tion skills. #1. Study: Edu­ca­tion and lifestyle helped over a mil­lion old­er Amer­i­cans avoid seri­ous cog­ni­tive prob­lems in 2017 Let’s kick­start 2022 with some good news: “The preva­lence of seri­ous cognitive…

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Great interview on bilingualism, sports, education and neuroplasticity — en español

(trans­la­tion avail­able below) Álvaro Fer­nán­dez Ibáñez: “La edu­cación bil­ingüe ayu­da a retrasar prob­le­mas cog­ni­tivos como el alzhéimer” (El Mun­do): PREGUNTA. ¿A qué se ded­i­can los neu­ro­con­sul­tores? ¿Qué relación tienen con la edu­cación? RESPUESTA. En los últi­mos años ha empeza­do a aumen­tar el interés por mejo­rar la capaci­dad del cere­bro. Al igual que las per­sonas quieren estar en…

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Six guidelines to navigate the Aduhelm controversy and (hopefully) help patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment and early-stage Alzheimer’s Disease

The approval of a con­tro­ver­sial new drug for Alzheimer’s dis­ease, Aduhelm, is shin­ing a spot­light on mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment — prob­lems with mem­o­ry, atten­tion, lan­guage or oth­er cog­ni­tive tasks that exceed changes expect­ed with nor­mal aging. After ini­tial­ly indi­cat­ing that Aduhelm could be pre­scribed to any­one with demen­tia, the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion now spec­i­fies that…

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Update: Understanding Brain Health via Cosmological Health, and vice versa

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing fas­ci­nat­ing find­ings, books and resources for life­long brain health. #1. “The human brain (sec­tion; left image above) func­tions thanks to its wide neu­ronal net­work that is deemed to con­tain approx­i­mate­ly 69 bil­lion neu­rons. On the oth­er hand, the observ­able uni­verse (sec­tion sim­u­la­tion; right image) can count…

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Trend: Growing research on the relationship between sleep and Alzheimer’s Disease

___ The brain may clean out Alzheimer’s plaques dur­ing sleep (Sci­ence­News): “Bendlin’s stud­ies are part of a mod­est but grow­ing body of research sug­gest­ing that a sleep-deprived brain might be more vul­ner­a­ble to Alzheimer’s dis­ease. In ani­mal stud­ies, lev­els of plaque-for­m­ing A‑beta plum­met dur­ing sleep. Oth­er research sug­gests that a snooz­ing brain runs the “clean…

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Fact: Multiple factors can contribute to memory problems…and “getting older” is often not the main one

When Mem­o­ry Changes Are More Than ‘Just Get­ting Old­er’ (US News): “You’ve prob­a­bly heard this phrase before: “I’m just get­ting older”…The expla­na­tion should be used with cau­tion, though. Often, I tell my patients not to blame some­thing they are expe­ri­enc­ing on “just get­ting old­er,” because they might miss some­thing that could be treatable

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