Cognitive-tests

Taking your brain vitals: Stories from a techno-optimist inventing the future of human performance

by

Dr. Cori Lath­an, author of Invent­ing the Future: Sto­ries from a Techno-Optimist

For as long as I can remem­ber, my father loved act­ing. Into his six­ties and ear­ly sev­en­ties, he was quite active in the the­ater. He played Tartuffe in Molière’s Tartuffe, Nick Bot­tom in Shakespeare’s A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream, and the Old Man in Steve Martin’s Picas­so at the Lapin Agile. When he won the role of Scrooge in a local pro­duc­tion of Dickens’s A Christ­mas Car­ol, I was so excit­ed for him that I bought tick­ets way before open­ing night. But he was hav­ing trou­ble remem­ber­ing his lines. Even­tu­al­ly, the direc­tor had to let him go.

To find out what was going on, my mom and dad went to his pri­ma­ry care physi­cian, who referred him to a neu­rol­o­gist. After wait­ing a month for that appoint­ment, the neu­rol­o­gist told Dad to see a neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist, who was booked anoth­er three months out. When that appoint­ment arrived, the neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist gave him a vari­ety of cog­ni­tive tests, includ­ing writ­ten, ver­bal, and com­put­er based. After anoth­er month, the neu­rol­o­gist called us back in and told my father, “You have mild cog­ni­tive impairment.”

“No shit, Sher­lock,” I thought. “That’s why we went to see his doc­tor six months ago.” The neu­rol­o­gist then dis­cussed my father’s oth­er health issues with us, which includ­ed car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, sleep apnea, type 2 dia­betes, and by that point, depres­sion. I then had an inspi­ra­tion. “Dad, when was the last time you used your CPAP machine?” He admit­ted sheep­ish­ly, “I don’t use it. I don’t like it.” [Read more…] about Tak­ing your brain vitals: Sto­ries from a tech­no-opti­mist invent­ing the future of human performance

Study: Building muscle mass helps delay cognitive decline beyond the value of exercise itself

by

A new rea­son to build mus­cle: brain health (The Globe and Mail):

… a recent study from researchers at McGill Uni­ver­si­ty, pub­lished in the jour­nal JAMA Net­work Open, offers a new rea­son for con­tin­u­ing to work on build­ing mus­cle: It’s good for your brain, not just your biceps. Greater mus­cle mass, the results sug­gest, helps ward off cog­ni­tive decline in old­er adults beyond what you’d expect based on their exer­cise lev­els alone. [Read more…] about Study: Build­ing mus­cle mass helps delay cog­ni­tive decline beyond the val­ue of exer­cise itself

Update: Playing videogames may be more cognitively beneficial than other forms of screentime like social media, watching videos/ TV

by

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing time­ly brain & men­tal health news and a fun brain teas­er to put your tem­po­ral lobes to good use 🙂

#1. Study finds that play­ing videogames may be more cog­ni­tive­ly ben­e­fi­cial for chil­dren than oth­er forms of screen­time (social media, watch­ing videos/ TV)

“Here, we esti­mat­ed the impact of dif­fer­ent types of screen time (watch­ing, social­iz­ing, or gam­ing) on children’s intel­li­gence while con­trol­ling for the con­found­ing effects of genet­ic dif­fer­ences in cog­ni­tion and socioe­co­nom­ic sta­tus … Broad­ly, our results are in line with research on the mal­leabil­i­ty of cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties from envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors, such as cog­ni­tive train­ing and the Fly­nn effect.”

Fas­ci­nat­ing! Hav­ing said that…

#2. Large neu­roimag­ing study finds social iso­la­tion to be an ear­ly indi­ca­tor of increased demen­tia risk

“Social inter­ac­tion is huge­ly impor­tant. One study found that the size of our social group is actu­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the vol­ume of the orbitofrontal cor­tex (involved in social cog­ni­tion and emo­tion). But how many friends do we need? … It is hard to argue with the fact that humans are social ani­mals and gain enjoy­ment from con­nect­ing with oth­ers, what­ev­er age we are. But, as we are increas­ing­ly uncov­er­ing, it also cru­cial for the health of our cognition.”

#3. UC study finds near-trans­fer of cog­ni­tive train­ing to be nec­es­sary (yet not suf­fi­cient) for far-trans­fer, broad­er benefits

“Some peo­ple do very well in train­ing, such as play­ing a video game, but they don’t show near trans­fer, per­haps because they are using high­ly spe­cif­ic strate­gies,” said first author Anja Pahor … “For these peo­ple, far trans­fer is unlike­ly. By bet­ter under­stand­ing why this type of mem­o­ry train­ing or ‘inter­ven­tion’ works for some peo­ple but not oth­ers, we can move for­ward with a new gen­er­a­tion of work­ing-mem­o­ry train­ing games or use approach­es that are more tai­lored to indi­vid­u­als’ needs”

#4. Please help us recruit 30,000 adults for a UC Cit­i­zen Sci­ence project on cog­ni­tive training

“In our ongo­ing large-scale study (note: the one right above) we aim to recruit 30,000 adults who are moti­vat­ed and will­ing to help us bet­ter under­stand the fac­tors that under­lie learn­ing out­comes using a vari­ety of train­ing par­a­digms and out­come mea­sures. Our endeav­or will ulti­mate­ly con­tribute to the per­son­al­iza­tion of cog­ni­tive train­ing so that, hope­ful­ly, any­one who would like to improve their cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing will be able to choose the approach that may fit them best.” — researchers Susanne Jaeg­gi, Anja Pahor, Aaron Seitz @ UC Irvine/ Riverside

#5. Trend: Esports teams har­ness cog­ni­tive tests to bet­ter match play­er to task and to iden­ti­fy train­ing opportunities

Esports are bor­row­ing a page from Pro Sports’ book … we would­n’t be sur­prised to see the inverse tak­ing place too in just a few years.

#6. Dos and Don’ts of Ther­a­py on the Go: Nav­i­gat­ing the use of apps for men­tal health care

“For those with­out severe men­tal ill­ness, app-based ther­a­py may be help­ful in match­ing clients with a pro­fes­sion­al famil­iar with a range of prob­lems and stres­sors. This makes apps attrac­tive to those with anx­i­ety and mild to mod­er­ate depres­sion. They also appeal to peo­ple who wouldn’t ordi­nar­i­ly seek out office-based ther­a­py, but who want help with life issues such as mar­i­tal prob­lems and work-relat­ed stress.”

#7. AI-enabled chat­bot Wysa receives FDA Break­through Device des­ig­na­tion for patients with chron­ic pain, depres­sion and anxiety

Let’s talk!

#8. And here’s the Brain Teas­er: Ready to stim­u­late those neu­rons in your tem­po­ral lobes?

 

Wish­ing you and yours a healthy and fun summer!

Study finds that playing videogames may be more cognitively beneficial for children than other forms of screentime (social media, watching videos/ TV)

by

Many par­ents feel guilty when their chil­dren play video games for hours on end. Some even wor­ry it could make their chil­dren less clever. And, indeed, that’s a top­ic sci­en­tists have clashed over for years.

In our new study, we inves­ti­gat­ed how video games affect the minds of chil­dren, inter­view­ing and test­ing more than 5,000 chil­dren aged ten to 12. And the results, pub­lished in Sci­en­tif­ic Reports, will be sur­pris­ing to some. [Read more…] about Study finds that play­ing videogames may be more cog­ni­tive­ly ben­e­fi­cial for chil­dren than oth­er forms of screen­time (social media, watch­ing videos/ TV)

Study: Artificial intelligence program identifies linguistic markers that predict, with 70% accuracy, who gets Alzheimer’s Disease years later

by

Fig. 3. Cook­ie-theft pic­ture descrip­tion task (CTT) exam­ples from the Fram­ing­ham Heart Study, includ­ing an unim­paired sam­ple (a), an impaired sam­ple (b), and an even more impaired sam­ple show­ing sig­nif­i­cant mis­spellings and min­i­mal gram­mat­ic com­plex­i­ty ©. Cred­it: Eyigoz et al (2020)

Alzheimer’s Pre­dic­tion May Be Found in Writ­ing Tests (The New York Times):

… the researchers looked at a group of 80 men and women in their 80s — half had Alzheimer’s and the oth­ers did not. But, sev­en and a half years ear­li­er, all had been cog­ni­tive­ly nor­mal. [Read more…] about Study: Arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence pro­gram iden­ti­fies lin­guis­tic mark­ers that pre­dict, with 70% accu­ra­cy, who gets Alzheimer’s Dis­ease years later

Study: Elders today are in significantly better shape–physically and cognitively–than three decades ago

by

Old­er peo­ple have become younger: phys­i­cal and cog­ni­tive func­tion have improved mean­ing­ful­ly in 30 years (Uni­ver­si­ty of Jyväskylä release):

The func­tion­al abil­i­ty of old­er peo­ple is nowa­days bet­ter when it is com­pared to that of peo­ple at the same age three decades ago. This was observed in a study con­duct­ed at the Fac­ul­ty of Sport and Health Sci­ences at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Jyväskylä, Fin­land. The study com­pared the phys­i­cal and cog­ni­tive per­for­mance of peo­ple nowa­days between the ages of 75 and 80 with that of the same-aged peo­ple in the 1990s. [Read more…] about Study: Elders today are in sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter shape–physically and cognitively–than three decades ago