Must-read interview with George Rebok, PhD: Can cognitive training help aging brains?

Can Train­ing Help Aging Brains? (Web­MD): George Rebok, PhD, con­duct­ed one of the largest stud­ies to date look­ing at how cog­ni­tive train­ing affects old­er adults. Rebok, a pro­fes­sor at the Cen­ter on Aging and Health at Johns Hop­kins School of Pub­lic Health, talks about the study find­ings, com­mer­cial­ly avail­able brain train­ing, and what he recommends…

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4 Essential (and Overlooked) Facts About Your Brain and Your Mind

An aspir­ing clar­inetist begins by get­ting a sense of the way the instrument’s sounds are pro­duced by the air she blows through it. A dri­ver must be acquaint­ed with var­i­ous vehi­cle fun­da­men­tals, such as adding gas, accel­er­at­ing, and read­ing the speedome­ter. It is no dif­fer­ent with the brain. Max­i­miz­ing your brain’s health and per­for­mance begins…

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Can brain training work? Yes, if it meets these 5 conditions

In a mod­ern soci­ety we are con­front­ed with a wide range of increas­ing­ly abstract and inter­con­nect­ed prob­lems. Suc­cess­ful­ly deal­ing with such an envi­ron­ment requires a high­ly fit brain, capa­ble of adapt­ing to new sit­u­a­tions and chal­lenges through­out life. Con­se­quent­ly, we expect cross-train­ing the brain to soon become as main­stream as cross-train­ing the body is today,…

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Train your brain with targeted videogames, not with crossword puzzles

Study shows men­tal agili­ty game slows cog­ni­tive decline in old­er peo­ple (Iowa Now): “Wolin­sky and col­leagues sep­a­rat­ed 681 gen­er­al­ly healthy med­ical patients in Iowa into four groups—each fur­ther sep­a­rat­ed into those 50 to 64 years of age and those over age 65. One group was giv­en com­put­er­ized cross­word puz­zles, while three oth­er groups were exposed to…

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Measuring and treating Chemo Brain

Chemo Brain’ After Breast Can­cer Backed by Study (US News): “Breast can­cer patients treat­ed with chemother­a­py are at risk for mild men­tal deficits known col­lec­tive­ly as “chemo brain,” a new study finds. Researchers at the Mof­fitt Can­cer Cen­ter in Tam­pa, Fla., reviewed exist­ing research on brain func­tion (“cog­ni­tive” func­tion­ing) in

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