Building cognitive reserve helps delay memory and thinking decline regardless of genetic or childhood markers

By SharpBrains | August 30, 2022

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing time­ly brain news and a few fun brain teasers to test your per­cep­tu­al and cog­ni­tive skills. #1. Study: Build­ing cog­ni­tive reserve helps delay mem­o­ry and think­ing decline regard­less of genet­ic or child­hood mark­ers “While our child­hood can influ­ence our mem­o­ry and think­ing skills lat­er in life,…

Read More

Fully-automated analysis of voice recordings–from neuropsychological tests–found to help differentiate normal cognition from dementia and mild cognitive impairment

By SharpBrains | August 16, 2022

Voice Record­ings Spot Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment (Med­Page Today): A machine-learn­ing mod­el iden­ti­fied mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment and demen­tia from dig­i­tal voice record­ings of neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal tests, an ear­ly study showed. Among 1,084 peo­ple in the Fram­ing­ham Heart Study whose tests were record­ed, the aver­age area under the curve (AUC) reached 92.6% for dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing nor­mal cog­ni­tion from demen­tia, 88.0% for…

Read More

Complex occupations help protect our brains from aging-related cognitive decline

By SharpBrains | December 15, 2021

Cog­ni­tive aging: Work helps our brain (AAAS): A recent study shows that work plays an active role in keep­ing our brains healthy. “We have demon­strat­ed the role of work­ing activ­i­ty on cog­ni­tive per­for­mance”. Pro­fes­sor Raf­fael­la Rumiati says … “Many stud­ies have been focused on the fac­tors influ­enc­ing our brain aging and dif­fer­ences in cog­ni­tive decline…

Read More

Six guidelines to navigate the Aduhelm controversy and (hopefully) help patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment and early-stage Alzheimer’s Disease

By Kaiser Health News | October 13, 2021

The approval of a con­tro­ver­sial new drug for Alzheimer’s dis­ease, Aduhelm, is shin­ing a spot­light on mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment — prob­lems with mem­o­ry, atten­tion, lan­guage or oth­er cog­ni­tive tasks that exceed changes expect­ed with nor­mal aging. After ini­tial­ly indi­cat­ing that Aduhelm could be pre­scribed to any­one with demen­tia, the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion now spec­i­fies that…

Read More

Cognitive training, diet, exercise, and vascular management seen to improve cognition even in people with genetic predisposition for dementia (APOE e4)

By SharpBrains | May 7, 2018

___ How do genet­ics impact ear­ly inter­ven­tion for demen­tia? (Med­ical News Bul­letin): “Car­dio­vas­cu­lar and neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­eases, such as demen­tia, have been linked to dys­func­tion of a vari­a­tion of the apolipopro­tein E, or APOE, gene, called the APOE e4 allele…The Finnish Geri­atric Inter­ven­tion Study to Pre­vent Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment and Dis­abil­i­ty (FINGER) eval­u­at­ed whether the effec­tive­ness of…

Read More

Study: Harnessing a virtual reality brain training game to diagnose mild cognitive impairment (MCI)

By SharpBrains | January 15, 2015

. Vir­tu­al real­i­ty brain train­ing game can detect mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment, a con­di­tion that often pre­dates Alzheimer’s dis­ease (press release): “Geek researchers demon­strat­ed the poten­tial of a vir­tu­al super­mar­ket cog­ni­tive train­ing game as a screen­ing tool for patients with mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment (MCI) among a sam­ple of old­er adults… In an arti­cle pub­lished in the…

Read More