Tracking Health and Wellness Applications of Brain Science

neuropsychological

Study with 330 centenarians finds that cognitive decline is not inevitable

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Hen­drik­je van Andel Schip­per (1890–2005)

Age-Relat­ed Cog­ni­tive Decline May Not Be Inevitable (Web­MD):

It is often assumed that a decrease in mem­o­ry and brain func­tion are inevitable parts of aging, but a new study of cen­te­nar­i­ans sug­gests otherwise.

Inves­ti­ga­tors found that despite the pres­ence of neu­ro­log­i­cal issues gen­er­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Alzheimer’s dis­ease (AD), many cen­te­nar­i­ans main­tained high lev­els of cog­ni­tive performance.

(Henne Hol­stege, PhD, assis­tant pro­fes­sor at Ams­ter­dam Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical Cen­ter) said her inter­est in research­ing aging and cog­ni­tive health was inspired by the “fas­ci­nat­ing” sto­ry of Hen­drik­je van Andel Schip­per, who died at age 115 in 2005 “com­plete­ly cog­ni­tive­ly healthy.” Her moth­er, who died at age 100, was also cog­ni­tive­ly intact at the end of her life. [Read more…] about Study with 330 cen­te­nar­i­ans finds that cog­ni­tive decline is not inevitable

Study: Artificial intelligence program identifies linguistic markers that predict, with 70% accuracy, who gets Alzheimer’s Disease years later

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Fig. 3. Cook­ie-theft pic­ture descrip­tion task (CTT) exam­ples from the Fram­ing­ham Heart Study, includ­ing an unim­paired sam­ple (a), an impaired sam­ple (b), and an even more impaired sam­ple show­ing sig­nif­i­cant mis­spellings and min­i­mal gram­mat­ic com­plex­i­ty ©. Cred­it: Eyigoz et al (2020)

Alzheimer’s Pre­dic­tion May Be Found in Writ­ing Tests (The New York Times):

… the researchers looked at a group of 80 men and women in their 80s — half had Alzheimer’s and the oth­ers did not. But, sev­en and a half years ear­li­er, all had been cog­ni­tive­ly nor­mal. [Read more…] about Study: Arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence pro­gram iden­ti­fies lin­guis­tic mark­ers that pre­dict, with 70% accu­ra­cy, who gets Alzheimer’s Dis­ease years later

Test your cognitive flexibility with this fun brain teaser

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Ready to test your con­cen­tra­tion pow­ers and cog­ni­tive flex­i­bil­i­ty? Try this clas­sic brain teas­er, fun for kids and adults alike.

Quick! Say aloud what col­or you see in every word. Don’t read the word — say the color 🙂

Tougher than expect­ed, right? This brain teas­er is actu­al­ly called the Stroop Test and is often used in neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal eval­u­a­tions to mea­sure exec­u­tive func­tions such as cog­ni­tive flex­i­bil­i­ty, inhi­bi­tion and self-reg­u­la­tion capability.

For more brain teasers and also visu­al illusions:

You say you can count? Check out this brief atten­tion experiment

Fun 25 Brain Teasers for Teens and Adults

Study: 10-minute cognitive test MoCA helps predict long-term motor, cognitive and mortality outcomes after stroke

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Sim­ple test may help pre­dict long-term out­come after stroke (Sci­ence Daily):

“We found that this test, which takes less than 10 min­utes, can help pre­dict whether peo­ple will have impaired think­ing skills, prob­lems that keep them from per­form­ing dai­ly tasks such as bathing and dress­ing and even whether they will be more like­ly to die,” said study author Mar­tin Dich­gans, MD, of Lud­wig-Max­i­m­il­ians Uni­ver­si­ty [Read more…] about Study: 10-minute cog­ni­tive test MoCA helps pre­dict long-term motor, cog­ni­tive and mor­tal­i­ty out­comes after stroke

Cognitive training, diet, exercise, and vascular management seen to improve cognition even in people with genetic predisposition for dementia (APOE e4)

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How do genet­ics impact ear­ly inter­ven­tion for demen­tia? (Med­ical News Bulletin):

“Car­dio­vas­cu­lar and neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­eases, such as demen­tia, have been linked to dys­func­tion of a vari­a­tion of the apolipopro­tein E, or APOE, gene, called the APOE e4 allele…The Finnish Geri­atric Inter­ven­tion Study to Pre­vent Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment and Dis­abil­i­ty (FINGER) eval­u­at­ed whether the effec­tive­ness of lifestyle mod­i­fi­ca­tions for those at risk of Alzheimer’s dis­ease would be dif­fer­ent for those with or with­out the APOE e4 gene. [Read more…] about Cog­ni­tive train­ing, diet, exer­cise, and vas­cu­lar man­age­ment seen to improve cog­ni­tion even in peo­ple with genet­ic pre­dis­po­si­tion for demen­tia (APOE e4)

Mindstrong Health identifies digital biomarkers of cognitive function using smartphone data

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mHealth Research on Men­tal Health Taps Into One’s Tap­ping Habits (mHealth Intelligence):

“Health­care providers look­ing to use mHealth in behav­ioral health treat­ment have long strug­gled to make the tech­nol­o­gy unob­tru­sive. But recent research sug­gests that remote mon­i­tor­ing of peo­ple with men­tal health issues could be done by ana­lyz­ing their smart­phone habits.

A recent report in the jour­nal NPJ Dig­i­tal Med­i­cine sug­gests that a smart­phone app that col­lects user activ­i­ty in the back­ground can help tele­men­tal health­care providers mea­sure that user’s dai­ly habits and detect when those habits devi­ate. By com­bin­ing [Read more…] about Mind­strong Health iden­ti­fies dig­i­tal bio­mark­ers of cog­ni­tive func­tion using smart­phone data