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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Learning Slows Physical Progression of Alzheimer’s Disease

Sci­ence Dai­ly post­ed an excit­ing arti­cle from the Jan. 24 issue of the Jour­nal of Neu­ro­science today.“Learning appears to slow the devel­op­ment of two brain lesions that are the hall­marks of Alzheimer’s dis­ease, sci­en­tists at UC Irvine have dis­cov­ered. The find­ing sug­gests that the elder­ly, by keep­ing their minds active, can help delay the onset of this degen­er­a­tive disease.“This study with genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied mice is the first to show that short but repeat­ed learn­ing ses­sions can slow a process known for caus­ing the pro­tein beta amy­loid to clump in the brain and form plaques, which dis­rupt com­mu­ni­ca­tion between cells and lead to symp­toms of Alzheimer’s disease.

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Neurogenesis and How Learning Saves Your Neurons

Jon Bar­ron’s blog high­light­ed this recent press release from The Soci­ety for Neu­ro­science. For decades, it was believed that the adult brain did not pro­duce new neu­rons after birth. But that notion has been dis­pelled by research in the last ten years. It became clear by the mid- to late-1990’s that the brain does, in…

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