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memory-decline

Dual decline in gait speed and memory function seen as most predictive of future dementia

June 8, 2022 by SharpBrains Leave a Comment

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…

[Read more…] about Dual decline in gait speed and mem­o­ry func­tion seen as most pre­dic­tive of future dementia

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: brain, cognition, cognitive decline, cognitive measure, dementia prevention, diagnosis of dementia, failing memory, gait speed, memory-decline, pathology, risk of dementia, slowing gait

Study: Work in adulthood seen to significantly delay memory decline after age 60, supporting the Cognitive Reserve theory

November 10, 2020 by Alvaro Fernandez

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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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: cognitive, cognitive-domains, cognitive-reserve, cognitive-stimulation, memory-decline, memory-loss, paid work, social-engagement, working

The best brain supplement to delay memory and thinking decline: A mentally stimulating job

April 29, 2015 by SharpBrains

work_brain.

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

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Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: Brain-health, brain-supplement, cognitive-decline, memory-decline, memory-tests, neurology, neuroplasticity, thinking decline, thinking tests

Beta amyloid build-up in the brain may increase risk of cognitive impairment more than having “Alzheimer’s gene”

October 18, 2012 by SharpBrains

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”

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: Alzheimers-disease, amyloid imaging, APOE Ε4, beta-amyloid, cognition, cognitive-exercise, Cognitive-impairment, memory-decline, plaques

Dr. Gary Small’s The Naked Lady Who Stood on Her Head: Brain Fog

October 6, 2010 by SharpBrains

(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

Brain Fog

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

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: Alzheimers-disease, book, brain fog, Brain-Imaging, demented, excerpt, forgetfulness, Gary-Small, Gigi Vorgan, Hypoglycemia, memory issues, memory-decline, mini-strokes, Naked Lady, UCLA

Education AND Lifelong Cognitive Activities build Cognitive Reserve and Delay Memory Loss

August 25, 2009 by Dr. Pascale Michelon

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 brain teasers job interviewenrolled 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– 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.

Ref­er­ences:

- Study: Hall C, et al “Cog­ni­tive activ­i­ties delay onset of mem­o­ry decline in per­sons who devel­op demen­tia” Neu­rol­o­gy 2009; 73: 356–361

- Book: The Sharp­Brains Guide To Brain Fit­ness: 18 Inter­views with Sci­en­tists, Prac­ti­cal Advice, and Prod­uct Reviews, to Keep Your Brain Sharp

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Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: Alzheimer’s-disease, board-or-card-games, brain-fitness-software, Bronx-Aging-Study, cognitive, cognitive-activities, cognitive-reserve, crossword-puzzles, dementia, diet, Education & Lifelong Learning, group-discussions, meditation, memory-decline, memory-loss, neurology, Neurons, or-playing-music, Physical-Exercise, reading, writing

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