When early retirement equals mental retirement and memory decline

By Dr. Pascale Michelon | October 14, 2010 |

The New-York Times reports on the study pub­lished a few days ago in the Jour­nal of Eco­nom­ic Per­spec­tives, “Men­tal retire­ment”: … Data from the Unit­ed States, Eng­land and 11 oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries sug­gest that the ear­li­er peo­ple retire, the more quick­ly their mem­o­ries decline. … what aspect of work is doing that, Dr. Suz­man said.…

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TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury), Iraq and neuropsychology

By Alvaro Fernandez | March 2, 2007 |

You prob­a­bly have seen the news about Bob Woodruf­f’s own recov­ery and his arti­cles now to raise aware­ness about the plight of Iraq veterans.In the arti­cle A First­hand Report on the Wounds of War we learn how “Woodruff, 45, is launch­ing a mul­ti­me­dia cam­paign that includes appear­ances Tues­day with Oprah Win­frey and on “Good Morn­ing Amer­i­ca,” and the release of a book (“ In an Instant”) writ­ten with his wife, Lee, about their ordeal.”“Woodruff’s report­ing packs an emo­tion­al punch because he is, quite sim­ply, a man who cheat­ed death.… dis­cuss­es what a great work the mil­i­tary is doing to pre­vent deaths of injured sol­diers in Iraq-with the unin­tend­ed con­se­quence that reha­bil­i­ta­tion ser­vices back in the US are com­plete­ly overwhelmed.Neurophilosopher puts this prob­lem in a wider con­text with DoD is neglect­ing troops’ men­tal health.For a bet­ter pre­spec­tive, this is a quote from our inter­view with Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg on Cog­ni­tive Train­ing, talk­ing about the birth of mod­ern neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy dur­ing World War II:“Of course there weren’t advanced neu­roimag­ing tech­niques those days, so sci­en­tists could only spec­u­late about what hap­pened in healthy brains.

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Enhancing Cognition and Emotions for Learning — Learning & The Brain Conference

By Caroline Latham | February 26, 2007

Alvaro and I had the good for­tune to attend a great con­fer­ence last week called Learn­ing & The Brain: Enhanc­ing Cog­ni­tion and Emo­tions for Learn­ing.… Some top­ics were meant to be applied imme­di­ate­ly, but many were food for thought — dis­cus­sions on where sci­ence and edu­ca­tion are headed.Using dra­mat­ic new imag­ing tech­niques, such as fMRIs, PET, and SPECT, neu­ro­sci­en­tists are gain­ing valu­able infor­ma­tion about learn­ing. This pio­neer­ing knowl­edge is lead­ing not only to new ped­a­go­gies, but also to new med­ica­tions, brain enhance­ment tech­nolo­gies, and ther­a­pies. Dis­cov­er how new adven­tures could change edu­ca­tion, learn­ing dis­or­der inter­ven­tions, and even soci­ety itself in the future.

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Sharpen Your Wits With This Special Offer!

By Caroline Latham | February 26, 2007

We are offer­ing a lim­it­ed-time deal for the rest of Feb­ru­ary 2007. If you buy any of the fol­low­ing brain fit­ness pro­grams: Freeze-Framer, Mind­Fit, Bas­ket­ball Intel­li­Gym, Cogmed Work­ing Mem­o­ry Train­ing, or Exer­cise your Brain DVD, you will get Brain Fit­ness 101 includ­ed for free!

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Is physical fitness important to your brain fitness?

By Caroline Latham | February 26, 2007 |

Here is ques­tion 18 of 25 from Brain Fit­ness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Questions.Question:Is phys­i­cal fit­ness important?Key Points: Exer­cise improves learn­ing through increased blood sup­ply and growth hormones.Exercise is an anti-depres­sant by reduc­ing stress and pro­mot­ing neurogenesis.Exercise pro­tects the brain from dam­age and dis­ease, as well speed­ing the recovery.Answer:Yes. Accord­ing to Fred Gage, PhD, of the Salk Insti­tute for Bio­log­i­cal Stud­ies, “We now know that exer­cise helps gen­er­ate new brain cells, even in the aging brain.”According to the research of Richard Smeyne, PhD at Saint Jude Children’s Research Hos­pi­tal in Mem­phis, with just two months of exer­cise there are more brain cells and that high­er lev­els of exer­cise were sig­nif­i­cant­ly more ben­e­fi­cial than low­er amounts, although any exer­cise was bet­ter than none.

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Are there herbal and vitamin supplements that will protect my memory?

By Caroline Latham | February 22, 2007 |

Omega‑3 and omega‑6 fat­ty acids found in cold-water fish may be help­ful to long term brain health.Folic acid may also be help­ful to both cog­ni­tive func­tion and hearing.Ginkgo bilo­ba and DHEA do not appear to help your brain.There is still more research to be done and nev­er dis­miss the place­bo effect!Omega‑3 fat­ty acids found in cold-water fish such as mack­er­el, her­ring, salmon, and tuna look more promis­ing. Giu­liano Fontani’s work at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Siena in Italy asso­ci­at­ed omega‑3 sup­ple­men­ta­tion with improved atten­tion­al and phys­i­o­log­i­cal func­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly those involv­ing com­plex cor­ti­cal processing.

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