It has been difficult to train individuals in such a way that they improve in general skills rather than the specific ones used in training. However, recently some success has been achieved using what is called an “n-back” task, a task that involves presenting a series of visual and/or auditory cues to a subject and asking the subject to respond if that cue has occurred, to start with, one time back. If the subject scores well, the number of times back is increased each round.
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A long-term study of older adults with similar levels of education has found that those with the thinnest cerebral cortex in specific brain regions were the most likely to develop dementia. Among those in whom these signature brain areas were the thinnest at the beginning of the study, 55% developed dementia over the next decade, compared with 20% of those with average cortical thickness and none of those in whom cortical thickness was above average. Those with the thinnest cortical areas also developed Alzheimer's significantly faster.
Some epidemiological studies have showed that people who smoke tend to have lower incidences of Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease; this has been widely attributed to nicotine. However, nicotine's harmful effects make it a poor drug candidate.
Cotinine, a byproduct of nicotine metabolism, is nontoxic and longer lasting than nicotine.
It must be easier to learn when your textbook is written clearly and simply, when your teacher speaks clearly, laying the information out with such organization and clarity that everything is obvious. But the situation is not as clear-cut as it seems. Of course, organization, clarity, simplicity, are all good attributes — but maybe information can be too clearly expressed. Maybe students learn more if the information isn’t handed to them on a platter.
For the first time in 27 years, clinical diagnostic criteria for Alzheimer's disease dementia have been revised, and research guidelines updated. They mark a major change in how experts think about and study Alzheimer's disease.
The updated guidelines now cover three distinct stages of Alzheimer's disease:
Growing evidence links obesity and poorer cognitive performance. Many factors associated with obesity, such as high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes and sleep apnea, damage the brain.
I commonly refer to ApoE4 as the ‘Alzheimer’s gene’, because it is the main genetic risk factor, tripling the risk for getting Alzheimer's. But it is not the only risky gene.
A mammoth genetic study has identified four new genes linked to late-onset Alzheimer's disease. The new genes are involved in inflammatory processes, lipid metabolism, and the movement of molecules within cells, pointing to three new pathways that are critically related to the disease.
A new perspective on learning comes from a study in which 18 volunteers had to push a series of buttons as fast as possible, developing their skill over three sessions. New analytical techniques were then used to see which regions of the brain were active at the same time. The analysis revealed that those who learned new sequences more quickly in later sessions were those whose brains had displayed more 'flexibility' in the earlier sessions — that is, different areas of the brain linked with different regions at different times.
Once upon a time we made a clear difference between emotion and reason. Now increasing evidence points to the necessity of emotion for good reasoning. It’s clear the two are deeply entangled.
Now a new study has found that those with a higher working memory capacity (associated with greater intelligence) are more likely to automatically apply effective emotional regulation strategies when the need arises.
The study involved 26 experienced Buddhist meditators and 40 control subjects. Scans of their brains while they played the "ultimatum game," in which the first player proposes how to divide a sum of money and the second can accept or reject the proposal, revealed that the two groups engaged different parts of the brain when making these decisions.