Reading for pleasure during childhood may lead to higher brain/ cognitive development and mental well-being during adolescence

Ear­ly child­hood is a crit­i­cal peri­od for brain devel­op­ment, which is impor­tant for boost­ing cog­ni­tion and men­tal well­be­ing. Good brain health at this age is direct­ly linked to bet­ter men­tal heath, cog­ni­tion and edu­ca­tion­al attain­ment in ado­les­cence and adult­hood. It can also pro­vide resilience in times of stress. But, sad­ly, brain devel­op­ment can be hampered…

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Study finds ADHD is associated with dementia

Multi­gen­er­a­tional Study Finds Links Between ADHD, Demen­tia Risk (Health Day): Atten­­tion-deficit/hy­per­ac­­tiv­i­­ty dis­or­der (ADHD) appears to be some­how linked to risk of demen­tia and Alzheimer’s dis­ease, a new multi­gen­er­a­tional study has found. Par­ents and grand­par­ents of peo­ple with ADHD have a high­er risk of Alzheimer’s and demen­tia than peo­ple with no ADHD in their fam­i­ly, Swedish researchers…

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Systematic review calls for early targeted interventions to help babies and toddlers with cerebral palsy harness time window with maximum brain plasticity

Ear­ly tar­get­ed inter­ven­tion ‘crit­i­cal’ for improv­ing out­comes in cere­bral pal­sy (Healio): Ear­ly inter­ven­tion for chil­dren with or at high risk for cere­bral pal­sy should begin “as soon as pos­si­ble” in order to build on “a crit­i­cal devel­op­men­tal time,” accord­ing to results of a sys­tem­at­ic review pub­lished in JAMA Pediatrics.

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Epigenetics research opens potential door to prevent neurodevelopmental disorders

___ Epi­ge­net­ic Changes Guide Devel­op­ment of Dif­fer­ent Brain Regions (Dana Foun­da­tion): “It’s one of the great­est stand­ing mys­ter­ies in neu­ro­science: Giv­en that each cell in the human body con­tains the same DNA, how, exact­ly, does the brain devel­op into dis­tinct func­tion­al regions, sup­port­ed by dif­fer­ent cell types? And how might that devel­op­men­tal pro­gram go awry,…

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Photobiomodulation: A new and promising way to enhance brain function

___ As is increas­ing­ly evi­dent, there are mul­ti­ple meth­ods aimed at enhanc­ing brain func­tion. Brain train­ing and mind­ful­ness prac­tices are com­mon­ly used. Sub­­s­tance-based meth­ods are pop­u­lar too, includ­ing hal­lu­cino­gens in the form of plant extracts, and drugs. Same as tran­scra­nial direct cur­rent stim­u­la­tion (tDCS) and tran­scra­nial mag­net­ic stim­u­la­tion (TMS): All of these are promis­ing but…

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Study combines neuroimaging with machine learning to predict, with 96% accuracy, whether high-risk 6‑month-old babies will develop autism spectrum disorder (ASD) by age 2

— A Sin­gle Brain Scan Has Been Used to Accu­rate­ly Pre­dict Autism at Just 6 Months Old (Sci­ence alert) “Researchers have used brain scans and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to spot dif­fer­ences in how key areas of infant brains syn­chro­nise, allow­ing them to accu­rate­ly pre­dict which babies would devel­op autism spec­trum dis­or­der (ASD) as a toddler…The research, led…

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