An exercise program that challenges the mind while mimicking daily tasks may improve mental functioning in older adults with mild cognitive decline, according to a new study. The trial found significant positive changes, lasting several months, among seniors with memory and thinking changes serious enough to be noticed by others but not so severe as […]
Brain Health
Daily Digest News: New study explores the relationship between cognitive activity and preservation
There is a mountain of evidence supporting the connection between rigorous mental activity through the lifetime and reduced rates of cognitive decline in older age. However, despite the repeated demonstrations of correlation between these two factors, whether or not one causes the other has yet to be determined. It is possible that people who seek […]
Nature World News: Big Brains Evolved to Help Humans See Better
According to researchers at the University of Bath, bigger brains help humans perceive more information from their visual fields and help reduce visual illusions. The research adds weight to the idea that size of certain brain areas such as the visual cortex played an important role in human evolution. The team found that the brain region dedicated to vision […]
Tech Times: Keep your brain busy, lower risk of cognitive decline: Study
One of the unwanted things associated with growing old is cognitive decline with 25 to 50 percent of adults 85 years old and over showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease, a condition marked by progressive memory impairment. Keeping your brain busy by reading, playing music and using the computer though may increase your chances of being […]
Daily Mail: Drinking cocoa ‘fights dementia’: Specific type of bean can stop proteins from building in the brain causing nerve damage
A nightly cup of cocoa could help stave off Alzheimer’s, scientists claim. Tests showed that a specific type of cocoa stops clumps of proteins from building up in the brain and damaging nerve cells – causing the disease to progress. Lavado cocoa is full of polyphenols, antioxidants which are also found in fruit and vegetables, […]
UC San Diego Health System: The Brain’s Balancing Act
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have discovered a fundamental mechanism by which the brain maintains its internal balance. The mechanism, described in the June 22 advanced online publication of the journal Nature, involves the brain’s most basic inner wiring and the processes that control whether a neuron relays information to […]
The Advertiser: Use your hands; improve your brain
In a much-read essay, Maria Konnikova cites several studies revealing what’s lost when people replace handwriting with a keyboard. At Indiana University, for example, psychologist Karin James showed preliterate children a letter on an index card and asked them to reproduce it by tracing, drawing on blank paper or typing on a computer. The children […]
Medical News Today: ‘Sensitive people’ show heightened activity in empathy-related brain regions
Psychologists at Stony Brook University, NY, suggest that about 20% of the population are genetically predisposed to be more aware and empathic. Now, in a new study, they explore which regions of the brain are implicated in this. They publish their findings in the journal Brain and Behavior. Stony Brook’s Elaine Aron, PhD, claims that about […]
Time: This Is the Brain Circuit That Makes You Shy
Brain researchers have long known that certain chemicals known as neurotransmitters soar or drop depending on what we’re doing and how we feel. Based on these observations, drug companies have developed an armada of medications aimed at mimicking these changes to treat everything from depression, hyperactivity and even social anxiety or shyness. But there’s a difference between observing […]
Fox News: Keeping brain active may delay cognitive decline by 9 years, study says
Challenging the mind early with education and stimulating work, and later in life with reading, socializing and computer use, may help keep it thinking clearly into old age, according to new research. In the study of people in their seventies and eighties without dementia, those with more years of education, mentally stimulating jobs and greater […]
