Tracking Health and Wellness Applications of Brain Science

neurodegenerative

September 17th @ UC Berkeley: Disrupting neurodegenerative diseases

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Quick heads-up about a great event next month for those based in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area.

  • When: Tues­day, Sep­tem­ber 17, 2019 / 8:30 AM – 6:00 PM PDT
  • Where: Pauley Ball­room, UC Berkeley
  • What: 2019 UC Berke­ley Aging Research & Tech­nol­o­gy Sum­mit: Dis­rupt­ing Neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive Diseases

Alzheimer’s and neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases are [Read more…] about Sep­tem­ber 17th @ UC Berke­ley: Dis­rupt­ing neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive diseases

Study finds promise in smell training to harness neuroplasticity and improve brain health in older adults

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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

Study: Practice effect due to repeated testing can delay detection of cognitive impairment and dementia

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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

Bill Gates announces $50 million investment to fight Alzheimer’s Disease

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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

Augmenting physiotherapy via neurofeedback and neurostimulation: Key neurotechnology patent #43

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therapy control
– Illus­tra­tive image from U.S. Patent No. 8,121,694

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)

U.S. Patent No. 8,121,694: Therapy control based on a patient movement state

  • Assignee(s): Medtron­ic, Inc.
  • Inventor(s): Gre­go­ry F. Mol­nar, Steven S. Gill, Kei­th A, Miesel, Mark S. Lent, Tim­o­thy J. Deni­son, Eric J. Panken, Carl D. Wahlstrand, Jonathan C. Werder
  • Tech­nol­o­gy Cat­e­go­ry: Neuro-monitoring
  • Issue Date: Feb­ru­ary 21, 2012

SharpBrains’ Take:

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

Study debunks 4 common myths about brain training and lifelong cognitive enhancement

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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