Walking Speed Helps Predict Future Dementia (MedPage Today):
Dual decline in gait speed and cognition carried a higher risk of dementia than either gait-only decline or cognitive-only decline, reported Taya Collyer, PhD, of Monash University in Victoria, Australia, and co-authors, in JAMA Network Open…
Memory Loss Slower for Working Women (MedPage Today):
Working women had slower memory decline as they aged than women who had not worked outside the home, a longitudinal study found.
Non-working mothers were twice as likely to develop memory impairment at age 70 as working married mothers, reported Elizabeth Rose Mayeda, PhD, MPH, of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health in Los Angeles, and co-authors. [Read more…] about Study: Work in adulthood seen to significantly delay memory decline after age 60, supporting the Cognitive Reserve theory
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Challenging Work Tasks May Have an Upside for the Brain (new study):
“Professionals whose jobs require more speaking, developing strategies, conflict resolution and managerial tasks may experience better protection against memory and thinking decline in old age than their co-workers, according to a new study [Read more…] about The best brain supplement to delay memory and thinking decline: A mentally stimulating job
Plaque Build-Up in Your Brain May Be More Harmful Than Having Alzheimer’s Gene (Science Daily):
“A new study shows that having a high amount of beta amyloid or “plaques” in the brain associated with Alzheimer’s disease may cause steeper memory decline in mentally healthy older people than does having the APOE ?4 allele, also associated with the disease. “Our results show that plaques may be a more important factor in determining which people are [Read more…] about Beta amyloid build-up in the brain may increase risk of cognitive impairment more than having “Alzheimer’s gene”
(Editor’s Note: what follows is an excerpt from Dr. Gary Small and Gigi Vorgan’s new book, The Naked Lady Who Stood on Her Head: A Psychiatrist’s Stories of His Most Bizarre Cases)
CHAPTER TEN
Summer 1990
Gigi and I had moved to Studio City, about a forty-minute commute to UCLA. On weekends, we often went to the movies at Universal CityWalk, a replication of Los Angeles within Los Angeles. Why people couldn’t just walk down the real streets of Los Angeles made no sense to me, yet there we were, on a Friday evening, eating ice cream and strolling down a simulated street.
We had just seen Total Recall, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s new sciencefiction film about a construction worker who undergoes a false memory transplant that takes him on an imaginary trip to Mars. But things go wrong, and when he comes out of it, he can’t tell what’s real and what’s imagined.
“When he first got back from Mars, there were so many signs that he was from the future that I believed it,” I said.
“But honey, before he had that memory implant done, he was perfectly happy living in the present—on Earth. Then he got all paranoid.”
“Of course he did. How do you know what’s reality if you can’t trust your memory?” I asked.
“I don’t know; you’re the memory expert. I want to go into this shop for a minute.” Gigi disappeared into a record store.
As I ate my ice cream and watched the crowds, I kept thinking about those questions. If two realities seem equally true, how would you know which version to believe? Many of my patients struggled with similar issues, whether they were psychotic, demented, or simply having memory problems.
Over the past few years, I had begun to concentrate a large part of my practice on memory issues—not just in older patients with Alzheimer’s disease but in middle-aged people who were worried about their increasing forgetfulness. My research was also focusing on early detection of dementia and age-related memory decline, and I was developing brain imaging as a diagnostic tool.
Gigi came back with a bag of CDs and said [Read more…] about Dr. Gary Small’s The Naked Lady Who Stood on Her Head: Brain Fog
In a recently published scientific study (see Hall C, et al “Cognitive activities delay onset of memory decline in persons who develop dementia” Neurology 2009; 73: 356–361), Hall and colleagues examined how education and stimulating activities may interact to contribute to cognitive reserve. The study involved 488 initially healthy people, average age 79, who 
enrolled in the Bronx Aging Study between 1980 and 1983. These individuals were followed for 5 years with assessments every 12 to 18 months (starting in 1980). At the start of the study, all participants were asked how many cognitive activities (reading, writing, crossword puzzles, board or card games, group discussions, or playing music) they participated in and for how many days a week. Researchers were able to evaluate the impact of self-reported participation these activities on the onset of accelerated memory decline in 101 individuals who developed dementia during the study.
Results showed that for every “activity day” (participation in one activity for one day a week) the subjects engaged in, they delayed for about two months the onset of rapid memory loss associated with dementia. Interestingly, the positive effect of brain-stimulating activities in this study appeared to be independent of a person’s level of education.
This is great news as it suggests that it is never too late to try to build up brain reserve. The more brain stimulating activities one does and the more often, the better for a stronger cognitive reserve.
The cognitive reserve hypothesis suggests that individuals with more cognitive reserve can experience more Alzheimer’s disease pathology in the brain (more plaques and tangles) without developing Alzheimer’s disease symptoms.
How does that work? Scientists are not sure but two possibilities are considered.
1. One is that more cognitive reserve means more brain reserve, that is more neurons and connections between neurons.
2. Another possibility is that more cognitive reserve means more compensatory processes (see my previous post “Education builds Cognitive Reserve for Alzheimers Disease Protection” for more details.)
Now, one may wonder about the difference types of mental stimulation available, including not only puzzles and such, but structured activities such as brain fitness software and meditation. Do we exercise our brain every time we think about something? What can one do to exercise one’s brain in ways that enhance capacity? Does aerobic fitness training also exercise one’s brain? What types of methodologies and products are available? Do they “work”? Are all the same?
Those are the types of questions we wanted to address in the book The SharpBrains Guide To Brain Fitness (available via Amazon.com). We are proud of the recognition the book has started to obtain, including endorsements by leading scientists:
“The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness is the only book that I know of that seamlessly integrates latest information about cognitive health across the lifespan, with interviews with active researchers examining cognitive maintenance and enhancement, along with reviews of commercial products targeted to cognitive enhancement. The book should be very useful to anyone interested in brain care, both health care professionals and the public at large”.
— Arthur Kramer, Professor of Psychology at University of Illinois
“This SharpBrains book provides a very valuable service to a wide community interested in learning and brain topics. I found it interesting and helpful”
- Michael Posner, Emeritus Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Oregon, and first recipient of the Dogan Prize
– Pascale Michelon, Ph. D., is SharpBrains’ Research Manager for Educational Projects. Dr. Michelon has a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology and has worked as a Research Scientist at Washington University in Saint Louis, in the Psychology Department. She conducted several research projects to understand how the brain makes use of visual information and memorizes facts. She is now an Adjunct Faculty at Washington University.
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