ginkgo-biloba

Despite the growing evidence against supplements making brain/ memory improvement claims, sales keep growing

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Why you shouldn’t both­er with mem­o­ry or brain health sup­ple­ments (Con­sumer Reports):

“The signs of mem­o­ry loss can be bewil­der­ing and scary: mis­placed keys, a for­got­ten street name, that task you sud­den­ly can’t remem­ber. It’s no won­der that, accord­ing to the Nutri­tion Busi­ness Jour­nal, sales of sup­ple­ments tout­ed as mem­o­ry boost­ers near­ly dou­bled between 2006 and 2015.

But accord­ing to a review of stud­ies pub­lished in Decem­ber, there’s vir­tu­al­ly no good evi­dence that such prod­ucts can pre­vent or delay mem­o­ry laps­es, mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment or demen­tia in old­er adults [Read more…] about Despite the grow­ing evi­dence against sup­ple­ments mak­ing brain/ mem­o­ry improve­ment claims, sales keep growing

Review finds mixed results on the effectiveness and safety of brain and memory supplements

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Omega 3 supplementsNat­ur­al Sup­ple­ments and Vit­a­mins for Treat­ment and Pre­ven­tion of Demen­tia and Cog­ni­tive Decline (Psy­chi­atric Times):

“Demen­tia, also referred to as major neu­rocog­ni­tive dis­or­der (includ­ing Alzheimer dis­ease [AD]), is a grow­ing prob­lem because of increased lifes­pan. There is no known cure. Sev­er­al drugs are [Read more…] about Review finds mixed results on the effec­tive­ness and safe­ty of brain and mem­o­ry supplements

From Anti-Alzheimer’s “Magic Bullets” to True Brain Health

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If you fol­lowed lat­est head­lines sur­round­ing the release of the Nation­al Alzheimer’s Plan, you’d prob­a­bly con­clude that the like­ly solu­tion to main­tain life­long brain health is sim­ple: sim­ply wait until 2025 for a “mag­ic bul­let” to be dis­cov­ered, to cure (or end or pre­vent) Alzheimer’s dis­ease and aging asso­ci­at­ed cog­ni­tive decline. These kinds of beliefs, often rein­forced by doc­tors and adver­tis­ing, may explain the bil­lions spent today by phar­ma com­pa­nies on dis­cov­er­ing new com­pounds, and by con­sumers on sup­ple­ments like gink­go bilo­ba. But [Read more…] about From Anti-Alzheimer’s “Mag­ic Bul­lets” to True Brain Health

Grand Rounds: Best of Health and Medical Blogging

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Grand Rounds blog car­ni­val, the week­ly edi­tion of what’s best in the health and med­ical blo­gos­phere. This week, twen­ty four blog­gers share data, insights, ques­tions, reflec­tions and more. Enjoy! [Read more…] about Grand Rounds: Best of Health and Med­ical Blogging

References on Cognitive Health/ Brain Fitness

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This is a par­tial list of the lit­er­a­ture we reviewed dur­ing the research phase of our new book, The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness.  We know many friends of Sharp­Brains are researchers, health­care pro­fes­sion­als, graduate/ Ph.D. stu­dents, who want have direct access to the ref­er­ences (per­haps PubMed should pro­mote itself as a nev­er end­ing source of men­tal stim­u­la­tion?), so here you have this list, orga­nized by rel­e­vant chap­ter. Please note that the list below appears in the book — whose man­u­script we had to close in Jan­u­ary 2009.

Intro­duc­tion

Basak, C. et al. (2008). Can train­ing in a real-time strat­e­gy video game atten­u­ate cog­ni­tive decline in old­er adults? Psy­chol­o­gy and Aging.
Beg­ley, S. (2007). Train your mind, change your brain: How a new sci­ence reveals our extra­or­di­nary poten­tial to trans­form our­selves. Bal­lan­tine Books.
DeKosky, S. T., et al. (2008). Gink­go bilo­ba for pre­ven­tion of demen­tia: a ran­dom­ized con­trolled tri­al. Jour­nal of the Amer­i­can Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion, 300, 2253–2262.
Doidge, N. (2007). The Brain that changes itself: Sto­ries of per­son­al tri­umph from the fron­tiers of brain sci­ence. Viking Adult.

Chap­ter 1. The Brain and Brain Fit­ness 101 

Bunge, S. A., & Wright, S. B. (2007). Neu­rode­vel­op­men­tal changes in work­ing mem­o­ry and cog­ni­tive con­trol. Cur­rent Opin­ion In Neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gy, 17(2), 243–50.
Dama­sio, A. (1995). Descartes error: Emo­tion, rea­son, and the human brain. Pen­guin Press.
David Kolb, D. (1983). Expe­ri­en­tial learn­ing: Expe­ri­ence as the source of learn­ing and devel­op­ment. FT Press.
Dra­gan­s­ki, B., Gas­er, C., Kem­per­mann, G., Kuhn, H. G., Win­kler, J., Buchel, C., & May A. (2006). Tem­po­ral and spa­tial dynam­ics of brain struc­ture changes dur­ing exten­sive learn­ing. The Jour­nal of Neu­ro­science, 261231, 6314–6317.
Gage, F. H., Kem­per­mann, G., & Song, H. (2007). Adult Neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis. Cold Spring Har­bor Lab­o­ra­to­ry Press, NY.
Gard­ner, H. (1983). Frames of Mind: The the­o­ry of mul­ti­ple intel­li­gences. New York: Basic Books.
Gas­er, C. & Schlaug, G. (2003). Brain struc­tures dif­fer between musi­cians and non-musi­cians. The Jour­nal of Neu­ro­science, 23, 9240–9245. [Read more…] about Ref­er­ences on Cog­ni­tive Health/ Brain Fitness

Brain fitness & training heads towards its tipping point

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How do you know when some­thing is fast mov­ing towards a Glad­wellian tip­ping point? When health insur­ance com­pa­nies and pub­lic pol­i­cy mak­ers launch sig­nif­i­cant initiatives.

For exam­ple, the gov­ern­ment of Ontario recent­ly announced a $10 mil­lion invest­ment with Bay­crest Research Cen­tre who will part­ner with MaRS Ven­ture Group to devel­op and com­mer­cialise brain fit­ness tech­nolo­gies. The invest­ment was matched by an addi­tion­al $10 mil­lion from pri­vate sources.

Anoth­er impor­tant devel­op­ment was the $18 mil­lion agree­ment between the Aus­tralian-based Brain Resource Com­pa­ny (ASX:BRC) and OptumHealth in the US. This will allow for the pro­vi­sion of web-based cog­ni­tive assess­ments as part of a clin­i­cian’s deci­sion sup­port systems.

These are some ini­tia­tives cov­ered in a webi­nar Top Ten Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness Events of 2008 pre­sent­ed in Decem­ber for Sharp­Brains’ clients. Alvaro Fer­nan­dez described the state of play and main dri­vers behind the growth of the bur­geon­ing brain fit­ness mar­ket — which I will try and sum­ma­rize here.

The key dri­vers seem to be [Read more…] about Brain fit­ness & train­ing heads towards its tip­ping point