delay-dementia

Update: A brain-friendly lifestyle is the best approach to delay cognitive decline and dementia

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While the hip­pocam­pus tends to shrink with age, which con­tributes to cog­ni­tive decline, a recent study shows that this is not always the case (see all those blue lines), sug­gest­ing it can be pos­si­ble to main­tain hip­pocam­pus vol­ume and cog­ni­tive func­tion into our lat­er years.

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Time to wrap-up anoth­er stim­u­lat­ing month with Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing this time a range of promis­ing news for every­one with a (human) brain 🙂

New tech for brain health:

New brain and mind research:

New thinking to shape education and healthcare:

Finally, a few riddles to tease your brain:

 

Have a great Thanks­giv­ing and December,

The Sharp­Brains Team

To delay dementia, try challenging (vs. routine) brain stimulation…up to a point

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brain__skeletonBrain games that could pay off in retire­ment (Mar­ket­Watch):

“Cog­ni­tive aging is the biggest health cri­sis in our coun­try,” said Denise C. Park…the mon­e­tary cost of demen­tia in the U.S. tops $157 bil­lion annu­al­ly, accord­ing to esti­mates by the Rand Corp.—and that num­ber could more than [Read more…] about To delay demen­tia, try chal­leng­ing (vs. rou­tine) brain stimulation…up to a point

Cognitive stimulation is beneficial, even after diagnosis of Alzheimer’s

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An inter­est­ing arti­cle in Nature Reviews last month reviewed sev­er­al stud­ies show­ing that cog­ni­tive inter­ven­tion can be ben­e­fi­cial even for indi­vid­u­als already diag­nosed with Alzheimer’s Dis­ease (Buschert et al., 2010).

The arti­cle shows that patients with mild-to-mod­er­ate demen­tia can ben­e­fit from a range of cog­ni­tive inter­ven­tions: from train­ing of par­tial­ly spared cog­ni­tive func­tions to train­ing on activ­i­ties of dai­ly liv­ing. Results sug­gest that such inter­ven­tions can improve glob­al cog­ni­tion, abil­i­ties of dai­ly liv­ing and qual­i­ty of life in these patients.

Patients with mod­er­ate-to-severe demen­tia seem to ben­e­fit from gen­er­al engage­ment in activ­i­ties that enhance cog­ni­tive and social func­tion­ing in a non-spe­cif­ic manner.

In gen­er­al, for patients diag­nosed with Alzheimer’s Dis­ease, the reviewed stud­ies sug­gest that pro­grams focus­ing on glob­al cog­ni­tive stim­u­la­tion are more effec­tive than pro­grams that train spe­cif­ic cog­ni­tive functions.

The oppo­site seems true for peo­ple diag­nosed with Mild Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment (MCI). As you may remem­ber, MCI diag­no­sis is made upon objec­tive mem­o­ry deficits that do not inter­fere with activ­i­ties of dai­ly liv­ing. 5 to 10% of peo­ple with MCI devel­op demen­tia with­in 1 year after being diagnosed.

It is inter­est­ing to see that the type of cog­ni­tive inter­ven­tion one may ben­e­fit from changes over the years, depend­ing on one’s cog­ni­tive sta­tus. This shows once again that there is no gen­er­al mag­ic pill in terms of brain fit­ness: Some inter­ven­tions or pro­grams work because they meet the needs of some spe­cif­ic indi­vid­u­als. No pro­gram can work for everybody.

[Read more…] about Cog­ni­tive stim­u­la­tion is ben­e­fi­cial, even after diag­no­sis of Alzheimer’s

The Brain Fitness/ Training Market: An Executive Summary

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Over the next weeks we are going to be shar­ing the Exec­u­tive Sum­ma­ry of our mar­ket report The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket 2008 with mem­bers and clients of sev­er­al part­ner orga­ni­za­tions (the British Colum­bia Seniors Liv­ing Asso­ci­a­tion, where I will be speak­ing this Thurs­day, Neu­rotech Reports, where I will speak on Octo­ber 24th, and the Health 2.0 con­fer­ence, where we are spon­sor­ing a pan­el on gam­ing for health), so it is only fair that we first share it with our own readers.

Exec­u­tive Summary

A spate of recent glob­al news cov­er­age on brain fit­ness and brain train­ing reflects a grow­ing inter­est in nat­ur­al, non drug-based inter­ven­tions to keep our brains sharp as we age. This inter­est is very time­ly, giv­en an aging pop­u­la­tion, increas­ing preva­lence of Alzheimer’s rates, and soar­ing health care costs in the US that place more empha­sis than ever on pre­ven­tion and lifestyle changes.

US brain fit­ness mar­ket: sig­nif­i­cant and growing

We esti­mate the size of the US brain fit­ness mar­ket was $225m in 2007 – more than dou­ble what it was in 2005. Where­as K12 school sys­tems were the largest buy­ers in 2005, con­sumers were respon­si­ble for most of the growth from 2005 to 2007. We esti­mate that the con­sumer seg­ment grew from a few mil­lion in 2005 to $80m in 2007, and fore­see sig­nif­i­cant mar­ket growth dri­ven not only by con­sumers but also by health­care and insur­ance providers.

Mar­ket dynamics

As we speak to diverse audi­ences about this emerg­ing field around the coun­try we are fre­quent­ly asked the fol­low­ing questions:

- Why are we talk­ing about the brain fit­ness field at all?

Over the past decade, teams backed by neu­ro­sci­en­tists around the world [Read more…] about The Brain Fitness/ Train­ing Mar­ket: An Exec­u­tive Summary