mental-exercises

With pharma exiting Alzheimer’s research, new hope (and urgency) seen in the combination of brain training and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS)

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What does the future hold for the war on Alzheimer’s? (The Globe and Mail):

“After spend­ing huge sums on clin­i­cal trails in recent years, the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try has failed to find a drug that can halt the mind-rob­bing dis­ease. And this month, Pfiz­er announced it is end­ing its Alzheimer’s research, although oth­er com­pa­nies haven’t thrown in the tow­el yet. But oth­er pre­ven­tion mea­sures are being explored.

Sev­er­al Toron­to hos­pi­tals are involved in an ambi­tious $10-mil­lion, five-year study to deter­mine whether a com­bi­na­tion of cog­ni­tive reme­di­a­tion – men­tal exer­cis­es – plus elec­tri­cal stim­u­la­tion of the brain can delay [Read more…] about With phar­ma exit­ing Alzheimer’s research, new hope (and urgency) seen in the com­bi­na­tion of brain train­ing and tran­scra­nial direct cur­rent stim­u­la­tion (tDCS)

Fact: Lifelong neuroplasticity means our 7.5 billion brains can “sculpt” themselves

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Much ongo­ing brain health and brain enhance­ment inno­va­tion is enabled by the core fact—called neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty–that the human brain con­tin­u­al­ly changes itself through expe­ri­ence. Neuroplasticity–or brain plas­tic­i­ty– refers to the brain’s abil­i­ty to rewire itself based on expe­ri­ence by gen­er­at­ing new neu­rons and by form­ing new con­nec­tions between neu­rons, among oth­er fac­tors. It was believed for a long time that, after a cer­tain age, the brain became “fixed.” Now we know that the brain nev­er stops chang­ing, and that’s why there’s so much inter­est and hope around ways to har­ness that neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty to lead bet­ter lives, to enhance our brains, to delay brain health decline.

What fol­lows from this fact is that we can strength­en spe­cif­ic cir­cuits of the brain (through edu­ca­tion, our jobs and lifestyles, and also through men­tal exer­cis­es, med­i­ta­tion and neu­rostim­u­la­tion), in order to learn faster, bet­ter and become more resilient.

–> Keep read­ing the arti­cle 5 Facts You Need To Know To Under­stand, Nav­i­gate And Enjoy The Dig­i­tal Brain Health Rev­o­lu­tion over at The Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Witnessing an explosion of consumer-facing neurotechnologies to (potentially) harness lifelong neuroplasticity

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Last week I shared some key sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal and invest­ment trends rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing Brain Health, based on my par­tic­i­pa­tion at the 2016 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit, and promised a sec­ond arti­cle more focused on the tech­nol­o­gy side of things.

Here it is 🙂

Just a few weeks after the Sharp­Brains Sum­mit I also attend­ed CES 2017. While I enjoyed the myr­i­ad emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies –autonomous vehi­cles, robot­ics, drones, aug­ment­ed and vir­tu­al real­i­ty head­sets, voice acti­vat­ed every­thing– I was most­ly struck by a firm named Halo Neu­ro­science. They have a fas­ci­nat­ing wear­able prod­uct, Halo Sport, claim­ing to accel­er­ate gains in strength, explo­sive­ness, endurance, and mus­cle mem­o­ry, improv­ing the brain’s response to ath­let­ic train­ing. It uses tDCS (tran­scra­nial direct cur­rent stim­u­la­tion), essen­tial­ly prim­ing move­ment-relat­ed cir­cuits of the brain to become more recep­tive to stim­uli, help­ing the brain wire in the prac­tice for improved future response.

The cutting edge of applied neuroplasticity

Both con­fer­ences allowed me to see the cut­ting edge of [Read more…] about Wit­ness­ing an explo­sion of con­sumer-fac­ing neu­rotech­nolo­gies to (poten­tial­ly) har­ness life­long neuroplasticity

Quick brain teasers to train your attention and working memory

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brain-teasers—

Here you have a few fun men­tal exer­cis­es to train your atten­tion and work­ing mem­o­ry (the capac­i­ty to hold mul­ti­ple pieces of infor­ma­tion in the mind, and to use them real-time). Giv­en them a try today and over the weekend…they are not as easy as they may sound!

  1. Say the days of the week back­wards, then in alpha­bet­i­cal order. If you speak anoth­er lan­guage, try doing the same in that language.
  2. Say the months of the year in alpha­bet­i­cal order. Then, for extra cog­ni­tive chal­lenge, try doing so back­wards, in reverse alpha­bet­i­cal order.
  3. Find the sum of your date of birth, mm/dd/yyyy. Want more quick brain teasers? Do the same with friends’ and rel­a­tives’ date of birth.
  4. Quick, name two objects for every let­ter in your com­plete name. Work up to five objects, try­ing to use dif­fer­ent items each time.
  5. Wher­ev­er you are, look around and with­in two min­utes, try to find 5 green things that will fit in your pock­et, and 5 red objects that are too big to fit.

[Read more…] about Quick brain teasers to train your atten­tion and work­ing memory

Training Young Brains to Behave

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Great arti­cle in the New York Times titled Train­ing Young Brains to Behave. A cou­ple of quotes:

- “But just as biol­o­gy shapes behav­ior, so behav­ior can accel­er­ate biol­o­gy. And a small group of edu­ca­tion­al and cog­ni­tive sci­en­tists now say that men­tal exer­cis­es of a cer­tain kind can teach chil­dren to become more self-pos­sessed at ear­li­er ages, reduc­ing stress lev­els at home and improv­ing their expe­ri­ence in school. Researchers can test this abil­i­ty, which they call exec­u­tive func­tion, and they say it is more strong­ly asso­ci­at­ed with school suc­cess than I.Q.”

- “We know that the pre­frontal cor­tex is not ful­ly devel­oped until the 20s, and some peo­ple will ask, [Read more…] about Train­ing Young Brains to Behave

Physical Exercise and Brain Health

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Healthy Seniors

What is the con­nec­tion between phys­i­cal and men­tal exer­cise? Do they have addi­tive effects on brain health? Are they redundant?

Let’s start by review­ing what we know about the effects of phys­i­cal exer­cise on the brain.

The effect of phys­i­cal exer­cise on cog­ni­tive performance

Ear­ly stud­ies com­pared groups of peo­ple who exer­cised to groups of peo­ple who did not exer­cise much. Results showed that peo­ple who exer­cised usu­al­ly had bet­ter per­for­mance in a range of cog­ni­tive tasks com­pared to non-exercisers.

Lau­rin and col­leagues (2001) even sug­gest­ed that mod­er­ate and high lev­els of phys­i­cal activ­i­ty were asso­ci­at­ed with low­er risk for Alzheimer’s dis­ease and oth­er dementias.

The prob­lem with these stud­ies is that the exer­cis­ers and the non-exer­cis­ers may dif­fer on oth­er fac­tors than just exer­cise. The advan­tage that exer­cis­er show may not come from exer­cis­ing but from oth­er fac­tors such as more resources, bet­ter brain health to start with, bet­ter diet, etc.

The solu­tion to this prob­lem is to ran­dom­ly assigned peo­ple to either an aer­o­bic train­ing group or a con­trol group. If the exer­cis­er group and the non-exer­cis­er group are very sim­i­lar to start with and if the exer­cis­er group shows less decline or bet­ter per­for­mance over time than the non-exer­cis­er group, then one can con­clude that phys­i­cal exer­cise is ben­e­fi­cial for brain health.

In 2003, Col­combe and Kramer, ana­lyzed the results of 18 sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies pub­lished between 2000 and 2001 that were con­duct­ed in the way described above.

The results of this meta-analy­sis clear­ly showed that fit­ness train­ing increas­es cog­ni­tive per­for­mance in healthy adults between the ages of 55 and 80.

Anoth­er meta-analy­sis pub­lished in 2004 by Heyn and col­leagues shows sim­i­lar ben­e­fi­cial effects of fit­ness train­ing on peo­ple over 65 years old who had cog­ni­tive impair­ment or dementia.

What is the effect of fit­ness train­ing on the brain itself?

Research with ani­mals has shown that in mice, increased aer­o­bic fit­ness (run­ning) can increase the num­ber of new cells formed in the hip­pocam­pus (the hip­pocam­pus is cru­cial for learn­ing and mem­o­ry). Increased exer­cise also has a ben­e­fi­cial effect on mice’s vas­cu­lar system.

Only one study has used brain imag­ing to look at the effect of fit­ness on the human brain. In 2006, Col­combe and col­leagues ran­dom­ly assigned 59 old­er adults to either a car­dio­vas­cu­lar exer­cise group, or a non­aer­o­bic exer­cise con­trol group (stretch­ing and ton­ing exer­cise). Par­tic­i­pants exer­cised 3h per week for 6 months. Col­combe et al. scanned the par­tic­i­pants’ brains before and after the train­ing period.

After 6 months, the brain vol­ume of the aer­o­bic exer­cis­ing group increased in sev­er­al areas com­pared to the oth­er group. Vol­ume increase occurred prin­ci­pal­ly in frontal and tem­po­ral areas of the brain involved in exec­u­tive con­trol and mem­o­ry process­es. The authors do not know what under­ly­ing cel­lu­lar changes might have caused these vol­ume changes. How­ev­er they sus­pect, based on ani­mal research, that vol­ume changes may be due to an increased num­ber of blood ves­sels and an increased num­ber of con­nec­tions between neurons.

How does phys­i­cal exer­cise com­pare to men­tal exercise?

Very few stud­ies have tried to com­pare the effect of phys­i­cal exer­cise and men­tal exer­cise on cog­ni­tive performance.brain books

When look­ing at each domain of research one notices the fol­low­ing differences:

- The effects of cog­ni­tive or men­tal exer­cise on per­for­mance seem to be very task spe­cif­ic, that is trained tasks ben­e­fit from train­ing but the ben­e­fits do not trans­fer very well to tasks in which one was not trained.

- The effects of phys­i­cal exer­cise on per­for­mance seem broad­er. How­ev­er they do not gen­er­al­ize to all tasks. They ben­e­fit most­ly tasks that involve exec­u­tive-con­trol com­po­nents (that is, tasks that require plan­ning, work­ing mem­o­ry, mul­ti­task­ing, resis­tance to distraction).

To my knowl­edge only one study tried to direct­ly com­pare cog­ni­tive and fit­ness training:

Keep read­ing…