neurodegenerative

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

by

—

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

News: Advanced Brain Monitoring receives Global Health and Pharma Award for clinical-grade platforms monitoring brain’s electrical activity

by

—

Advanced Brain Mon­i­tor­ing Named “Most Inno­v­a­tive Med­ical Device Com­pa­ny” at Glob­al Health and Phar­ma Awards (Sleep Review):

“Advanced Brain Mon­i­tor­ing Inc was named the “Most Inno­v­a­tive Med­ical Device Com­pa­ny” by Glob­al Health and Phar­ma at its 2016 Health­care and Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal awards. “This award rec­og­nizes our company’s suc­cess­es in devel­op­ing tech­nolo­gies which enable clin­i­cians and clin­i­cal tri­al spon­sors to pro­file brain health through the analy­sis of the brain’s elec­tri­cal activ­i­ty (EEG) dur­ing sleep and wake,” says Chris Berka, Advanced Brain Mon­i­tor­ing CEO…The com­pa­ny was recent­ly award­ed a $1.5 mm grant from Nation­al Insti­tute of Health to expand its data­base of awake and sleep EEG in patients with neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases. “The envi­sioned future is for rou­tine brain health assess­ments dur­ing sleep and wak­ing to be con­duct­ed in a man­ner sim­i­lar to a mam­mo­gram or colonoscopy,” says Berka. “Ulti­mate­ly, ear­ly detec­tion will increase the like­li­hood that an inter­ven­tion can be matched to the patient based on the pres­ence of brain bio­mark­ers and admin­is­tered pri­or to the onset of cog­ni­tive decline.”

To learn more:

Dr. Michael Merzenich: To harness Neuroplasticity for cognitive enhancement, we need to think “Fitness” more than “Games”

by

KavliPrize-Neuro(Edi­tor’s Note: In order to help read­ers famil­iar­ize them­selves with the work and think­ing of Dr. Michael Merzenich, one of the win­ners of the 2016 Kavli Prize in Neu­ro­science for ground­break­ing work on neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty, we are con­dens­ing and repub­lish­ing the com­pre­hen­sive con­ver­sa­tion that Dr. Merzenich and Alvaro Fer­nan­dez had in 2009, in prepa­ra­tion for the inau­gur­al Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit.)

Dr. Michael Merzenich, Emer­i­tus Pro­fes­sor at UCSF, is a lead­ing pio­neer in brain plas­tic­i­ty research. In the late 1980s, Dr. Merzenich was on the team that invent­ed the cochlear implant. In 1996, he was the found­ing CEO of Sci­en­tif­ic Learn­ing Cor­po­ra­tion, and in 2004 became co-founder and [Read more…] about Dr. Michael Merzenich: To har­ness Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty for cog­ni­tive enhance­ment, we need to think “Fit­ness” more than “Games”

Next: Smell tests to help detect brain injury and neurodegenerative ailments

by

smell_systemSmell Tests Could One Day Reveal Head Trau­ma and Neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive Dis­ease (Sci­en­tif­ic American):

“Name that smell—if you can’t, it could be an indi­ca­tor of a prob­lem some­where in your brain. New research sug­gests that scratch-and-sniff smell tests could become [Read more…] about Next: Smell tests to help detect brain injury and neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive ailments

Study: Brain imaging not accurate or sensitive enough (yet) to detect Alzheimer’s disease in primary care settings

by

dementia_pet_imagingAccu­ra­cy of demen­tia brain imag­ing must improve (Uni­ver­si­ty of East Anglia release):

“A report pub­lished today in The Lancet Neu­rol­o­gy eval­u­ates for the first time how well dif­fer­ent types of brain imag­ing tests work to detect Alzheimer’s and pre­dict how the dis­ease will progress.

The results show that the accu­ra­cy of brain imag­ing must be improved before it can be rolled out [Read more…] about Study: Brain imag­ing not accu­rate or sen­si­tive enough (yet) to detect Alzheimer’s dis­ease in pri­ma­ry care settings

Philips and Accenture develop ALS care proof of concept on top of Emotiv brain wave headset

by

emotiv_sensorPhilips, Accen­ture test brain-con­trolled sys­tem for ALS patients (Reuters):

“The Nether­lands’ Roy­al Philips and IT con­sul­tan­cy Accen­ture are devel­op­ing soft­ware to help peo­ple with neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases like amy­otroph­ic lat­er­al scle­ro­sis, com­mon­ly known as Lou Gehrig’s dis­ease, live more inde­pen­dent­ly. [Read more…] about Philips and Accen­ture devel­op ALS care proof of con­cept on top of Emo­tiv brain wave headset