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cognitive-stimulation

Update: Promote brain plasticity by taking your daily exercise pill — physical and cognitive

July 30, 2021 by Alvaro Fernandez

By lordzg/ shutterstock.com

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing nine sci­en­tif­ic reports and indus­try devel­op­ments to help pro­mote life­long brain health.

#1. A must-read, and must-prac­tice: Pro­mote brain plas­tic­i­ty and keep your mind at ease by tak­ing your dai­ly “exer­cise pill”

#2. If cog­ni­tive stim­u­la­tion came in a pill it’d be worth a quadrillion, give or take a few tril­lions: Study finds that cog­ni­tive activ­i­ty in old age may delay the onset of demen­tia by 5 years

#3. “A young child with low cog­ni­tive con­trol is also more like­ly to devel­op anx­i­ety lat­er on in child­hood, while one with a high­er capac­i­ty will be more resilient to stress. Rais­ing cog­ni­tive con­trol could both treat anx­i­ety in young chil­dren and poten­tial­ly pre­vent it from becom­ing worse over time” — Help­ing young brains fight off anx­i­ety by train­ing and rais­ing cog­ni­tive control

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

“In a nation­al sur­vey last fall, 36% of adults in the U.S. – includ­ing 61% of young adults – report­ed feel­ing “seri­ous lone­li­ness” dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Sta­tis­tics like these sug­gest peo­ple would be itch­ing to hit the social scene. But if the idea of mak­ing small talk at a crowd­ed hap­py hour sounds ter­ri­fy­ing to you, you’re not alone. Near­ly half of Amer­i­cans report­ed feel­ing uneasy about return­ing to in-per­son inter­ac­tion regard­less of vac­ci­na­tion status.”
#5. Fas­ci­nat­ing to see mind­ful­ness apps/ pro­grams going main­stream: Evi­dence-based, employ­er-focused med­i­ta­tion pro­gram eMind­ful acquired by dig­i­tal behav­ioral change firm Won­dr Health
#6. AI-pow­ered Woe­bot rais­es $90M to scale up dig­i­tal self-ther­a­py platform
“The stress of the pan­dem­ic has made an exist­ing men­tal health cri­sis even more alarm­ing. We’re see­ing this first­hand in ado­les­cents in class­rooms across the coun­try and in adults who are report­ing symp­toms of anx­i­ety and depres­sion at a rate four times pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els” — Ian Chiu, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor at Owl Ventures

#7. Study shows promis­ing results of EEG-based brain train­ing in help­ing adults with ADHD

“The study demon­strates for the first time the ben­e­fi­cial neu­robe­hav­ioral effect of a sin­gle NFB ses­sion in adult ADHD, and rein­forces the notion that Event-relat­ed poten­tials (ERPs) could serve as use­ful diagnostic/prognostic mark­ers of exec­u­tive dysfunction.”

#8. Sys­tem­at­ic review calls for ear­ly tar­get­ed inter­ven­tions to help babies and tod­dlers with cere­bral pal­sy har­ness time win­dow with max­i­mum brain plasticity

“Cur­rent­ly, ear­ly diag­no­sis of high-risk CP offers the oppor­tu­ni­ty for ear­ly inter­ven­tion at a crit­i­cal devel­op­men­tal plas­tic­i­ty win­dow. The ear­li­er we inter­vene, the bet­ter the out­come is.”

#9. UK report iden­ti­fies oppor­tu­ni­ties and gaps for dig­i­tal tech to improve, not harm, men­tal health

“Sup­port for men­tal health has need­ed improve­ment for many years in the UK. The path­ways for access­ing ser­vices are con­vo­lut­ed, wait­ing lists are exten­sive, and out­comes are poor over the long term … Com­ing up with new ways to main­tain good men­tal health, in a pre­ven­ta­tive way, will be as essen­tial as pro­vid­ing tools for acute care and we believe tech­nol­o­gy has a sig­nif­i­cant role to play.” — Dr Peter Bloom­field, FCC’s head of Pol­i­cy and Research

Wish­ing you a hap­py and healthy month of August,

The Sharp­Brains Team

NB: Please remem­ber that, if you’re look­ing for some fun and var­ied cog­ni­tive exer­cise, you can always try these 25 Brain Teasers, Puz­zles & Games that Sharp­Brains read­ers have enjoyed the most.

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning, SharpBrains Monthly eNewsletter, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Brain Teasers, Brain-games, Brain-Plasticity, brains, cognitive-control, cognitive-stimulation, EEG, eMindful, mental health, mindfulness apps, neuroscience, puzzles, Woebot, Wondr Health

Study: Work in adulthood seen to significantly delay memory decline after age 60, supporting the Cognitive Reserve theory

November 10, 2020 by Alvaro Fernandez

Mem­o­ry Loss Slow­er for Work­ing Women (Med­Page Today):

Work­ing women had slow­er mem­o­ry decline as they aged than women who had not worked out­side the home, a lon­gi­tu­di­nal study found.

Non-work­ing moth­ers were twice as like­ly to devel­op mem­o­ry impair­ment at age 70 as work­ing mar­ried moth­ers, report­ed Eliz­a­beth Rose Maye­da, PhD, MPH, of the UCLA Field­ing School of Pub­lic Health in Los Ange­les, and co-authors. [Read more…] about Study: Work in adult­hood seen to sig­nif­i­cant­ly delay mem­o­ry decline after age 60, sup­port­ing the Cog­ni­tive Reserve theory

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: cognitive, cognitive-domains, cognitive-reserve, cognitive-stimulation, memory-decline, memory-loss, paid work, social-engagement, working

Study: High Cognitive Reserve (CR) seen to significantly lower dementia risk even in the presence of high Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) neuropathology

October 5, 2020 by SharpBrains

Fig­ure 2. Inci­dence Rates of Demen­tia per 1000 Per­son-Years by Cog­ni­tive Reserve (CR) Ter­tile and Brain Pathol­o­gy; adjust­ed for age, sex, smok­ing, alco­hol con­sump­tion, phys­i­cal activ­i­ty, body mass index, heart dis­ease, hyper­ten­sion, cere­brovas­cu­lar dis­ease, dia­betes, and apolipopro­tein E e4. AD indi­cates Alzheimer dis­ease. Source: Xu H et al (2020)

Lifes­pan Cog­ni­tive Reserve—A Secret to Cop­ing With Neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive Pathol­o­gy (JAMA Neu­rol­o­gy editorial):

Giv­en the lim­it­ed suc­cess of ther­a­peu­tic inter­ven­tions for Alzheimer dis­ease, there is increased inter­est in under­stand­ing whether mod­i­fi­able fac­tors can help cope with or post­pone the appear­ance of brain pathol­o­gy. It is esti­mat­ed that about 35% of Alzheimer risk is mod­i­fi­able. Epi­demi­o­log­ic stud­ies have shown that life­time expo­sures to high­er edu­ca­tion, high­er occu­pa­tion­al attain­ment, and cog­ni­tive­ly stim­u­lat­ing activ­i­ties are asso­ci­at­ed with reduced risk of Alzheimer demen­tia. Autop­sy stud­ies have shown interindi­vid­ual dif­fer­ences in the amount of brain pathol­o­gy peo­ple can tol­er­ate before man­i­fest­ing cog­ni­tive impair­ments, and autop­sied brains of about one-third of indi­vid­u­als who are cog­ni­tive­ly nor­mal meet neu­ropatho­log­i­cal cri­te­ria for Alzheimer dis­ease. [Read more…] about Study: High Cog­ni­tive Reserve (CR) seen to sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er demen­tia risk even in the pres­ence of high Alzheimer’s Dis­ease (AD) neuropathology

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: Alzheimer-disease, brain pathology, Cognitive-impairment, cognitive-reserve, cognitive-stimulation, dementia, Education & Lifelong Learning, JAMA, neurodegeneration, neurology, neuropathology, occupational attainment, therapeutic-interventions

Quick brain teaser to prove the limits of multitasking

August 21, 2020 by Dr. Pascale Michelon

How often do you dis­cuss office gos­sip via chat while par­tic­i­pat­ing in a Zoom meet­ing? Or read a great arti­cle while talk­ing on the phone with a client? Or, wait, think about work prob­lems while help­ing your child with homework?

Yup, it is not easy to stay focused and be tru­ly pro­duc­tive. [Read more…] about Quick brain teas­er to prove the lim­its of multitasking

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Filed Under: Brain Teasers, Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: attention, attentional focus, Brain Teasers, brain-teaser, cognitive-abilities, cognitive-stimulation, multitasking, quick brain teaser

Brain Teaser: Ready to stimulate those neurons in your temporal lobes?

November 3, 2018 by Dr. Pascale Michelon

Lan­guage is pri­mar­i­ly processed in the tem­po­ral lobes–on the sides of your brain, next to you tem­ples, most­ly on the left side–and dif­fer­ent areas in the tem­po­ral lobes deal with dif­fer­ent aspects of lan­guage. For exam­ple, the Wer­nicke area sup­ports your abil­i­ty to under­stand words, where­as the Bro­ca area allows you to pro­duce lan­guage or artic­u­late words.

Let’s try a fun brain teas­er to help you exer­cise a good range of those neu­rons in your tem­po­ral lobes… [Read more…] about Brain Teas­er: Ready to stim­u­late those neu­rons in your tem­po­ral lobes?

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Filed Under: Brain Teasers, Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: adults, Brain Teasers, brain-teaser, cognitive-stimulation, fun brain teaser, fun brain teasers, language, Neurons, temporal-lobes

5 quick brain teasers to sharpen two key cognitive skills: attention and working memory

March 31, 2017 by Caroline Latham

Look­ing for some fun–and free–cognitive stim­u­la­tion over the week­end? Here you have a few quick brain teasers to chal­lenge your atten­tion and your work­ing mem­ory (work­ing mem­ory is the capac­i­ty to keep infor­ma­tion in your mind while work­ing on pro­cess­ing and inte­grat­ing it)

Please give them a try…they are not as easy as they may seem 🙂 [Read more…] about 5 quick brain teasers to sharp­en two key cog­ni­tive skills: atten­tion and work­ing memory

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Filed Under: Brain Teasers Tagged With: adults, attention, brain games for adults, Brain Teasers, brain teasers for adults, brain-teaser, cognitive, cognitive-abilities, cognitive-ability, cognitive-skills, cognitive-stimulation, free-brain-teasers, mind-teasers, skills, Working-memory

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