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Quick heads-up about a great event next month for those based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Alzheimer’s and neurodegenerative diseases are [Read more…] about September 17th @ UC Berkeley: Disrupting neurodegenerative diseases
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An impaired sense of smell can signal cognitive decline, but ‘smell training’ could help (The Conversation):
“As we age, we often have problems with our ability to smell (called olfactory dysfunction). Older people might not be able to identify an odour or differentiate one odour from another. In some cases they might not be able to detect an odour at all.
Odour identification difficulties are common in people with neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease [Read more…] about Study finds promise in smell training to harness neuroplasticity and improve brain health in older adults
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Practice Imperfect: Repeated Cognitive Testing Can Obscure Early Signs of Dementia (UC San Diego Health press release):
“Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive, neurodegenerative condition that often begins with mild cognitive impairment or MCI, making early and repeated assessments of cognitive change crucial to diagnosis and treatment.
But in a paper published online in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring, a team of researchers led by scientists at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine found that repeated testing of middle-age men produced a “practice effect” which obscured true cognitive decline and [Read more…] about Study: Practice effect due to repeated testing can delay detection of cognitive impairment and dementia
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Why I’m Digging Deep Into Alzheimer’s (Bill Gates):
“In every part of the world, people are living longer than they used to. Thanks to scientific advancements, fewer people die young from heart disease, cancer, and infectious diseases. It’s no longer unusual for a person to live well into their 80s and beyond. My dad will celebrate his 92nd birthday in a couple weeks, a milestone that was practically unimaginable when he was born.
This fact—that people are living longer than ever before—should always be a wonderful thing. But what happens when it’s not? [Read more…] about Bill Gates announces $50 million investment to fight Alzheimer’s Disease
Today we are sharing a fascinating patent from Medtronic. (As mentioned, we are featuring 50 foundational Pervasive Neurotech patents, from older to newer by issue date)
The ‘694 patent discloses methods to treat patients afflicted with movement or other neurodegenerative disorders through brain-signal feedback. [Read more…] about Augmenting physiotherapy via neurofeedback and neurostimulation: Key neurotechnology patent #43
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If the media is your main source of information about brain training and cognitive enhancement, you will probably believe the following:
1) All brain training is the same…
2) …and it simply doesn’t work.
3) Commercial brain training programs, especially, don’t work.
4) How could they work? Genetics is destiny, aging is a predetermined process…so by age 60 or 70 or 80, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”
If you tracked and analyzed the scientific literature around cognitive training, cognitive therapies, biofeedback, meditation, brain reserve and neuroplasticity in general, you’d know those 4 beliefs are wrong. They are myths that prevent a more nuanced conversation about brain-enhancing lifestyles and about the emerging brain training and neurotechnology toolkit.
Good news is, a just-published study should help debunk those myths–especially with regards to computerized cognitive training–and provide a better [Read more…] about Study debunks 4 common myths about brain training and lifelong cognitive enhancement
