Survey of 2500 families finds what ADHD treatments seem to work/ not work as applied in the real world

While care­ful­ly con­trolled clin­i­cal tri­als are essen­tial for estab­lish­ing sci­en­tif­ic sup­port for dif­fer­ent ADHD treat­ments, it is also impor­tant to exam­ine how par­ents feel about the treat­ments they actu­al­ly select for their child. How par­ents feel about ADHD treat­ments they have tried for their child pro­vides an impor­tant com­ple­ment to pub­lished clin­i­cal tri­als data, and can…

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AARP: A majority of Americans believe dietary supplements improve brain health, despite the lack of evidence

_____ New Report Dis­cour­ages Adults From Using Brain Health Sup­ple­ments (Pre­ven­tion): “This morn­ing, the Glob­al Coun­sel on Brain Health released a report con­clud­ing that dietary sup­ple­ments do not improve brain health or pre­vent cog­ni­tive decline, demen­tia, or Alzheimer’s dis­ease. The report, released by the AARP, flat­ly rec­om­mends that most con­sumers do not take sup­ple­ments for…

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Vitamin D and Cognitive Decline: What’s the Relationship?

The role of vit­a­min D in the brain appeared evi­dent in the 1980s when researchers found key pro­teins in the brain involved in vit­a­min D metab­o­lism. A lot of clin­i­cal evi­dence has accu­mu­lat­ed since then sug­gest­ing that low vit­a­min D lev­els may poten­tial­ly result in cog­ni­tive decline. Nonethe­less the results are mixed and not all…

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Update: New Research, Resources, and Teasers for All

Every­one these days is talk­ing about edu­ca­tion and test­ing reform, but why is rel­e­vant brain research often ignored? Which organ if not the brain does the learn­ing and teach­ing part? Renowned edu­ca­tor and brain expert Dr. Robert Syl­west­er shares his rec­om­mend­ed Top Brain Books for Edu­ca­tors and Learn­ers to help inform the con­ver­sa­tion. A must read! Save the…

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Vitamin B against Alzheimer’s? Too early to tell.

An inter­est­ing and very well-doc­u­­men­t­ed arti­cle in the Los Ange­les Times reviews stud­ies look­ing at Vit­a­min B and its role in improv­ing mem­o­ry. The vit­a­mins — includ­ing folic acid and vit­a­mins B6 and B12 — are often tout­ed as a way to improve mem­o­ry and stave off cog­ni­tive decline. The claims are based on the…

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Brain Health: Physical or Mental Exercise?

Our fel­low blog­ger Jere­my over at Psy­Blog has writ­ten a thought­ful post com­par­ing the val­ue of a num­ber of cog­ni­tive enhanc­ing tools. His over­all ver­dict? “The evi­dence for exer­cise boost­ing cog­ni­tive func­tion is head-and-shoul­ders above that for brain train­ing, drugs, nutri­tion­al sup­ple­ments and med­i­ta­tion. Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly, on the cur­rent evi­dence, exer­cise is the best way to…

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