I reported a few months ago on some evidence of a link between disturbed sleep and the development of Alzheimer’s. Now a mouse study adds to this evidence.
The mouse study follows on from an earlier study showing that brain levels of amyloid beta naturally rise when healthy young mice are awake and drop after they go to sleep, and that sleep deprivation disrupted this cycle and accelerated the development of amyloid plaques. This natural rhythm was confirmed in humans.
HIV-associated dementia occurs in around 30% of untreated HIV-positive patients. Surprisingly, it also is occasionally found in some patients (2-3%) who are being successfully treated for HIV (and show no signs of AIDS).
A new study may have the answer for this mystery, and suggest a solution. Moreover, the answer may have general implications for those experiencing cognitive decline in old age.
Stress is a major cause of workplace accidents, and most of us are only too familiar with the effects of acute stress on our thinking. However, although the cognitive effects are only too clear, research has had little understanding of how stress has this effect. A new rat study sheds some light.
In the study, brain activity was monitored while five rats performed a working memory task during acute noise stress. Under these stressful conditions, the rats performed dramatically worse on their working memory task, with performance dropping from an average of 93% success to 65%.
Here’s an exciting little study, implying as it does that one particular aspect of information processing underlies much of the cognitive decline in older adults, and that this can be improved through training. No, it’s not our usual suspect, working memory, it’s something far less obvious: temporal processing.
Back in 2010, I briefly reported on a study suggesting that a few minutes of ‘quiet time’ could help you consolidate new information. A new study provides more support for this idea.
Memory problems in those with mild cognitive impairment may begin with problems in visual discrimination and vulnerability to interference — a hopeful discovery in that interventions to improve discriminability and reduce interference may have a flow-on effect to cognition.
What underlies differences in fluid intelligence? How are smart brains different from those that are merely ‘average’?
Brain imaging studies have pointed to several aspects. One is brain size. Although the history of simplistic comparisons of brain size has been turbulent (you cannot, for example, directly compare brain size without taking into account the size of the body it’s part of), nevertheless, overall brain size does count for something — 6.7% of individual variation in intelligence, it’s estimated. So, something, but not a huge amount.
We know that stress has a complicated relationship with learning, but in general its effect is negative, and part of that is due to stress producing anxious thoughts that clog up working memory. A new study adds another perspective to that.
I’ve reported, often, on the evidence that multitasking is a problem, something we’re not really designed to do well (with the exception of a few fortunate individuals), and that the problem is rooted in our extremely limited working memory capacity. I’ve also talked about how ‘working memory’ is a bit of a misnomer, given that we probably have several ‘working memories’, for different modalities.
I’ve reported before on the growing evidence that metabolic syndrome in middle and old age is linked to greater risk of cognitive impairment in old age and faster decline. A new study shows at least part of the reason.