Neurotechnology Trends, and the Neurosoftware Market

By Alvaro Fernandez | November 2, 2007 |

The Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy Indus­try Orga­ni­za­tion (NIO) just announced the top ten emerg­ing areas of neu­ro­science that will “impact the future of treat­ments for brain and ner­vous sys­tem”: Top 10 Neu­ro­science Trends in 2007. It pro­vides superb food for thought. And some of them will sound famil­iar to read­ers of this blog: * 6. Nor­mal brain aging gets…

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Brain Fitness Software and Training Games

By Alvaro Fernandez | August 16, 2007 |

Unless you have been liv­ing in a cave, you have read by now mul­ti­ple arti­cles about the brain train­ing and brain exer­cise craze: sudoku, Nin­ten­do BrainAge, mul­ti­ple online games, soft­ware like Mind­Fit and Posit Sci­ence… If you are look­ing for some fun men­tal stim­u­la­tion now, here you have our selec­tion of Brain Teasers. Now, how…

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Are there herbal and vitamin supplements that will protect my memory?

By Caroline Latham | February 22, 2007 |

Omega‑3 and omega‑6 fat­ty acids found in cold-water fish may be help­ful to long term brain health.Folic acid may also be help­ful to both cog­ni­tive func­tion and hearing.Ginkgo bilo­ba and DHEA do not appear to help your brain.There is still more research to be done and nev­er dis­miss the place­bo effect!Omega‑3 fat­ty acids found in cold-water fish such as mack­er­el, her­ring, salmon, and tuna look more promis­ing. Giu­liano Fontani’s work at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Siena in Italy asso­ci­at­ed omega‑3 sup­ple­men­ta­tion with improved atten­tion­al and phys­i­o­log­i­cal func­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly those involv­ing com­plex cor­ti­cal processing.

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Brain Training and SharpBrains in the news

By Alvaro Fernandez | February 21, 2007 |

Sev­er­al recent sto­ries on brain train­ing and Sharp­Brains: 1) New brain games may improve mind fit­ness by Kevin Koster­man (U of Wis­con­sin Oshkosh’s Advance-Titan) “Any­time we learn, we are train­ing, chang­ing, our brain,” Fer­nan­dez said. “The three key core ele­ments for effec­tive brain exer­cise are nov­el­ty, vari­ety and con­stant chal­lenge, sim­i­lar to increas­ing the level…

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Cognitive Reserve and Lifestyle

By Caroline Latham | February 6, 2007 |

In hon­or of the Week of Sci­ence pre­sent­ed at Just Sci­ence we will be writ­ing about “just science”.Today, we will high­light the key points in an excel­lent review of cog­ni­tive reserve: Today, we will high­light the key points in an excel­lent review of cog­ni­tive reserve: Scarmeas, Niko­laos and Stern, Yaakov. Cog­ni­tive reserve and lifestyle. Jour­nal of Clin­i­cal and Exper­i­men­tal Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy. 2003;25:625–33.The con­cept of cog­ni­tive reserve has been defined as the abil­i­ty of an indi­vid­ual to tol­er­ate pro­gres­sive brain pathol­o­gy with­out demon­strat­ing clin­i­cal cog­ni­tive symp­toms. Epi­demi­o­log­i­cal evi­dence sug­gests that indi­vid­u­als with high­er IQ, edu­ca­tion, occu­pa­tion­al achieve­ment, or par­tic­i­pa­tion in intel­lec­tu­al­ly and social­ly active lifestyles may result in both quan­ti­ta­tive­ly more cog­ni­tive net­works and qual­i­ta­tive­ly more func­tion­al­ly effi­cient net­works result­ing in more reserve.

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