Update: A Fresh Look at Enhancing Brain & Mental Health Across the Lifespan

Time for Sharp­Brains’ May 2013 e‑newsletter, which fea­tures a vari­ety of arti­cles offer­ing a more opti­mistic and evi­­dence-based approach to brain and men­tal health than cur­rent prac­tices. First of all, let us high­light that Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can just pub­lished an excel­lent review of our new book. The author sums it up by say­ing that “…I wish I had read…

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Challenging medical dogma: Mental exercise vs drugs, supplements and physical exercise to prevent cognitive decline

Men­tal exer­cis­es may pre­vent men­tal decline in seniors (CBC News):  “A review released by the Cana­di­an Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion Jour­nal on the pre­ven­tion of cog­ni­tive decline said that med­i­c­i­nal and non-med­i­c­i­­nal prod­ucts, and phys­i­cal exer­cise did noth­ing to pre­vent the decline in healthy seniors, but men­tal exercises 

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Drugs for Early-Stage Alzheimer’s?

Drugs for Ear­­ly-Stage Alzheimer’s (good New York Times edi­to­r­i­al): “The Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion has pro­posed low­er­ing the bar for approv­ing drugs to treat peo­ple at the ear­li­est stages of Alzheimer’s dis­ease, before they have devel­oped any seri­ous impair­ment or overt demen­tia. The goal is com­mend­able — to find ways to pre­vent or slow the…

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Neurologists prescribing cognitive enhancement drugs to healthy kids and adults?

Accord­ing to a new posi­tion state­ment by the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Neu­rol­o­gy (AAN), pre­scrib­ing cog­ni­tive enhance­ment, “atten­­tion-boost­­ing,” drugs to healthy chil­dren is mis­guid­ed and not jus­ti­fi­able. Inter­est­ing­ly, a 2009 posi­tion state­ment by AAN still in force today stat­ed that doing so with adult “patients” is both legal and eth­i­cal (includ­ing the remark that “Neu­rol­o­gists who pre­scribe medications…

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Alzheimer’s Disease population to triple: We need smarter research, public health initiatives and lifestyles

Accord­ing to a new study, the pop­u­la­tion with Alzheimer’s Dis­ease in the US will triple by 2050: from 4.7 mil­lions in 2010 to 13.8 mil­lions. This empha­sizes the urgent need for more research to find pre­ven­tive mea­sures, and for more enlight­ened pub­lic health ini­tia­tives and indi­vid­ual lifestyles designed to decrease demen­tia risks and delay onset of symptoms.…

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New Report: Human Enhancement and the Future of Work

Sum­ma­ry of the report just issued by The Roy­al Soci­ety in the UK: “Although the impact of human enhance­ment tech­nolo­gies has been wide­ly debat­ed, until now they have not been con­sid­ered in terms of their impact upon the nature of work…the Acad­e­my of Med­ical Sci­ences, British Acad­e­my, Roy­al Acad­e­my of Engi­neer­ing and Roy­al Soci­ety came…

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