To screen, or not to screen (for dementia), that is still the question

A lead­ing group of med­ical experts on Tues­day declined to endorse cog­ni­tive screen­ing for old­er adults, fuel­ing a debate that has sim­mered for years. The U.S. Pre­ven­tive Ser­vices Task Force said it could nei­ther rec­om­mend nor oppose cog­ni­tive screen­ing, cit­ing insuf­fi­cient sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence of the practice’s ben­e­fits and harms and call­ing for fur­ther stud­ies. The task…

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Executive Functions in Health and Disease: New book to help integrate Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology

__________ Neu­ro­science used to be the monop­oly of a few elite uni­ver­si­ties locat­ed in a hand­ful of coun­tries. Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy used to be a quaint niche dis­ci­pline rel­a­tive­ly uncon­nect­ed to the larg­er world of neu­ro­science and con­tent in its meth­ods with paper-and-pen­­cil tests. 

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Neurologists prescribing cognitive enhancement drugs to healthy kids and adults?

Accord­ing to a new posi­tion state­ment by the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Neu­rol­o­gy (AAN), pre­scrib­ing cog­ni­tive enhance­ment, “atten­­tion-boost­­ing,” drugs to healthy chil­dren is mis­guid­ed and not jus­ti­fi­able. Inter­est­ing­ly, a 2009 posi­tion state­ment by AAN still in force today stat­ed that doing so with adult “patients” is both legal and eth­i­cal (includ­ing the remark that “Neu­rol­o­gists who pre­scribe medications…

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