Brain Health and Alzheimer’s disease

from Brain Fit­ness 101: Answers to Your Top 25 Ques­tions. Does a brain fit­ness pro­gram pre­vent Alzheimer’s dis­ease and oth­er forms of demen­tia? Stud­ies have shown men­tal­ly active peo­ple have low­er rates and lat­er onset of symp­toms for Alzheimer’s dis­ease and oth­er forms of demen­tia. These dis­eases involve a num­ber of vari­ables like fam­i­ly his­to­ry, phys­i­cal fit­ness, nutri­tion, and brain fit­ness. Peo­ple who remain intel­lec­tu­al­ly active and engage in hob­bies reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s dis­ease by one third.

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Brain Fitness Glossary

Giv­en the grow­ing aware­ness of this emerg­ing field, let’s review some of the most rel­e­vant con­cepts: Brain Fit­ness: the gen­er­al state of good, sharp, brain and mind, espe­cial­ly as the result of men­tal and phys­i­cal exer­cise and prop­er nutri­tion. Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram: struc­tured set of brain exer­cis­es, usu­al­ly com­put­er-based, designed to train spe­cif­ic brain areas and…

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Dana Alliance’s Brain Awareness Week for Brain Health

The Dana Alliance for Brain Ini­tia­tives is keep­ing up its great out­reach ini­tia­tives: 1‑ Check their blog with posts such as Resolve to be good to your brain, too. Tip: “Brain change takes time; allow your brain time to get used to new cir­cum­stance” (from the Dana Guide to Brain Health).  You can read our The Dana…

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Are there specific brain fitness programs for adults?

Question:Are there spe­cif­ic brain fit­ness pro­grams for adults?Answer:Yes, there are sci­ence-based soft­ware pro­grams designed to pro­vide a com­pre­hen­sive brain work­out specif­i­cal­ly for adults who want to main­tain an agile and sharp mind.A good pro­gram should include an assess­ment, a vari­ety of chal­leng­ing tasks that use dif­fer­ent cog­ni­tive skills, reg­u­lar prac­tice, and feed­back.… It can also pro­vide cus­tomized train­ing sched­ules and feed­back dur­ing and after your train­ing session.Look for pro­grams that focus on life abil­i­ties such as: work­ing mem­o­ry, visu­al and audi­to­ry short term mem­o­ry, plan­ning, loca­tion mem­o­ry, nam­ing, time esti­ma­tion, divid­ed atten­tion, and hand-eye coordination.

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Neuroplasticity and Lifelong Learning

What a month. We promised you with our blog title 7 months ago that we would be your “Win­dow into the Brain Fit­ness Rev­o­lu­tion”, but we could­n’t have pre­dict­ed that CBS, Time Mag­a­zine, WSJ, NYT and oth­er main­stream media would be such great allies in this neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty effort. Spe­cial Offer: For a lim­it­ed time, you…

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What does “normal aging” mean? Do we all age the same way?

Question:Is it nec­es­sary to train under the super­vi­sion of a doc­tor or oth­er specialist?Key Points: Recre­ation­al activ­i­ties have always been done for fun either social­ly or independently.Most com­put­er-based soft­ware pro­grams are intend­ed for you to use on your own com­put­er when it suits you.… But most of the soft­ware pro­grams today are designed to be user-friend­ly and used in the com­fort and pri­va­cy of your own home with­out any out­side supervision.Many pro­grams have a built in coach or teacher to help explain what you are doing in each exer­cise, why you are doing it, and how you are doing.

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