normal-aging

Why retirement planning should include mental fitness

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retirement_road

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Are You Men­tal­ly Fit Enough to Plan for Retire­ment? (Mon­ey):

“In this era of “self-direct­ed” retire­ment (no pen­sions, you make all the invest­ment choic­es) post­pon­ing mak­ing a real plan pos­es a par­tic­u­lar risk to future secu­ri­ty. Not only are the logis­tics of plan­ning hard enough—when to col­lect Social Secu­ri­ty, how to bud­get for expens­es, what to do with savings—but the decline in cog­ni­tion that [Read more…] about Why retire­ment plan­ning should include men­tal fitness

Update: 2009 Market Report Finds Growth, Promise and Confusion

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Here you have the April edi­tion of our month­ly newslet­ter cov­er­ing cog­ni­tive health and Brain Fitnessbrain fit­ness top­ics. Please remem­ber that you can sub­scribe to receive this Newslet­ter by email, using the box at the top of this page.

We are excit­ed to release our 2009 mar­ket report The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket 2009. To be for­mal­ly released on May 4th but avail­able now for our clients and read­ers, this report aims to inform deci­sion-mak­ers at health­care, insur­ance, research, pub­lic pol­i­cy, invest­ment and tech­nol­o­gy orga­ni­za­tions about impor­tant devel­op­ments in the brain fit­ness and cog­ni­tive health space.

2009 Mar­ket Report

The State of the Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket 2009: This new 150-page report finds The State of the Brain Fitness/ Training Software Market 2009 reportsus­tained growth in the brain fit­ness soft­ware mar­ket (from $225m in 2007 to $265m in 2008) and promis­ing seeds for future growth, com­bined with increased con­fu­sion giv­en aggres­sive mar­ket­ing claims and lack of edu­ca­tion and stan­dards. The report includes, for the first time, a Mar­ket & Research Momen­tum Matrix to cat­e­go­rize 21 key ven­dors, 10 Research Exec­u­tive Briefs writ­ten by 12 lead­ing sci­en­tists, and the com­plete results of our mar­ket sur­vey with 2,000+ respon­dents. You can learn more, and acquire the report, Here.

News and Resources

Cog­ni­tive Health News April Round-Up: New cog­ni­tive track at the Games for Health con­fer­ence, bilin­gual brains, pover­ty’s effect on the brain and work­ing mem­o­ry due to stress, dia­betes, neu­roen­hanc­ing drugs, Kel­log­g’s set­tle­ment with the FTC, neu­rocog­ni­tive test­ing in the military.

Nor­mal Aging vs. Alzheimer’s Dis­ease: Dr. Murali Doraiswamy shares his very insight­ful views on the key ques­tion, “How can we help the pub­lic at large to dis­tin­guish Alzheimer’s Dis­ease from nor­mal aging — so that an inter­est in ear­ly iden­ti­fi­ca­tion does­n’t trans­late into unneed­ed wor­ries?”, based on his recent book The Alzheimer’s Action Plan.

Upcom­ing Guide 

The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: It seems every week brings a new bar­rage of arti­cles and stud­ies which often con­tra­dict what you read the month before: Does Gingko Bilo­ba improve mem­o­ry? Can phys­i­cal exer­cise help you stay sharp as you age? Which brain fit­ness pro­gram”, if any, is worth your mon­ey? Why is man­ag­ing stress so impor­tant for mem­o­ry and the brain?. This new book (avail­able both in print and Kin­dle ver­sions) aims to answer those ques­tions ‑and more. We will send you an email announce­ment when the book is ready for pur­chase, in late May.

The Big Picture

Do Art Class­es Boost Test Scores? Is there a “Mozart Effect?”: Some researchers sug­gest so; oth­ers are not con­vinced. Karin Evans, through our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Greater Good Mag­a­zine, offers a very thought­ful review of the evi­dence. She also chal­lenges us by ask­ing, “Now, is this the right question?”

Improv­ing the world, and one’s brain, at the same time: The Gold­man Envi­ron­men­tal Prize recent­ly rec­og­nized sev­en social entre­pre­neurs who are clear­ly help­ing improve the state of the world. Now, the “state of the world” does include their very own brains — as you may have seen in a recent study.

Brain Teasers

Brain plas­tic­i­ty and dai­ly live: If you lived in Lon­don, and want­ed to grow your hip­pocam­pus, which job would you choose?

Stim­u­late your Con­cen­tra­tion Skills: when one real­ly wants to mem­o­rize a fact, it is cru­cial to pay atten­tion. Dr. Pas­cale Mich­e­lon chal­lenges you to count a few sim­ple letters.

Have a great May

Alzheimer’s Early and Accurate Diagnosis: Normal Aging vs. Alzheimer’s Disease

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(Edi­tor’s Note: I recent­ly came across an excel­lent book and resource, The Alzheimer’s Alzheimer's Disease Action PlanAction Plan: The Experts’ Guide to the Best Diag­no­sis and Treat­ment for Mem­o­ry Prob­lems, just released in paper­back. Dr. Murali Doraiswamy, one of the authors and lead­ing Alzheimer’s expert, kind­ly helped us cre­ate a 2‑part arti­cle series to share with Sharp­Brains read­ers advice on a very impor­tant ques­tion, “How can we help the pub­lic at large to dis­tin­guish Alzheimer’s Dis­ease from nor­mal aging — so that an inter­est in ear­ly iden­ti­fi­ca­tion does­n’t trans­late into unneed­ed wor­ries?” What fol­lows is an excerpt from the book, pages 3–8).

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Jane, fifty-sev­en, man­aged a large sales force. She prid­ed her­self on being good at names, and intro­duc­tions were easy for her—until last spring when she referred to Bar­bara as Bet­ty at a meet­ing and had to cor­rect her­self. She start­ed notic­ing that her mem­o­ry wasn’t as depend­able as it once was—she had to real­ly try to remem­ber names and dates. Her moth­er had devel­oped Alzheimer’s in her late sev­en­ties, so Jane enter­tained a wide array of wor­ries: Is this just aging? Is it because of menopause? Is it ear­ly Alzheimer’s? Did her cowork­ers or fam­i­ly notice her slips? Should she ask them? Should she see a doc­tor, and if so, which doc­tor? Would she real­ly want to know if she was get­ting Alzheimer’s? Would she lose her job, health insur­ance, or friends if she did have Alzheimer’s?

As it turns out, Jane did not have Alzheimer’s. She con­sult­ed a doc­tor, who, in doc­s­peak, told her that the pas­sage of time (get­ting old­er) had tak­en a slight toll on her once-superquick mem­o­ry. She was slow­ing down a lit­tle, and if she relaxed, the name or date or oth­er bit of infor­ma­tion she need­ed would come to her soon enough. She was still good at her job and home life. She had sim­ply joined the ranks of the wor­ried well.

Nor­mal brain aging, begin­ning as ear­ly as the for­ties in some peo­ple, may include:

  • Tak­ing longer to learn or remem­ber information
  • Hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty pay­ing atten­tion or con­cen­trat­ing in the midst of distractions
  • For­get­ting such basics as an anniver­sary or the names of friends
  • Need­ing more reminders or mem­o­ry cues, such as promi­nent appoint­ment cal­en­dars, reminder notes, a phone with a well­stocked speed dial

Although they may need some assis­tance, old­er peo­ple with­out a men­tal dis­or­der retain their abil­i­ty to do their errands, han­dle mon­ey, find their way to famil­iar areas, and behave appropriately.

How does this com­pare to a per­son with Alzheimer’s? When Alzheimer’s slows the brain’s machin­ery, peo­ple begin to lose their abil­i­ty to [Read more…] about Alzheimer’s Ear­ly and Accu­rate Diag­no­sis: Nor­mal Aging vs. Alzheimer’s Disease

Alzheimer’s Risk and Prevention: the Cognitive Reserve

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A cou­ple of recent research find­ings are mak­ing the media rounds, bring­ing much need­ed atten­tion to the high Alzheimer’s rates among Lati­nos and to pre­ven­tive approach­es based on the Cog­ni­tive Reserve — such as, what jobs we choose:

More Alzheimer’s risk for His­pan­ics, stud­ies find (Inter­na­tion­al Her­ald Tribune):

- Stud­ies sug­gest that many His­pan­ics may have more risk fac­tors for devel­op­ing demen­tia than oth­er groups, and a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber appear to be get­ting Alzheimer’s ear­li­er. And sur­veys indi­cate that Lati­nos, less like­ly to see doc­tors because of finan­cial and lan­guage bar­ri­ers, more often mis­take demen­tia symp­toms for nor­mal aging, delay­ing diagnosis.

- “This is the tip of the ice­berg of a huge pub­lic health chal­lenge,” said Yani­ra Cruz, pres­i­dent of the Nation­al His­pan­ic Coun­cil on Aging. “We real­ly need to [Read more…] about Alzheimer’s Risk and Pre­ven­tion: the Cog­ni­tive Reserve