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.
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From the Whitehall II study, data involving 5431 older participants (45-69 at baseline) has revealed a significant effect of midlife sleep changes on later cognitive function. Sleep duration was assessed at one point between 1997 and 1999, and again between 2002 and 2004. A decrease in average night’s sleep from 6, 7, or 8 hours was significantly associated with poorer scores on tests of reasoning, vocabulary, and the MMSE. An increase from 7 or 8 hours (but not from 6 hours) was associated with lower scores on these, as well as on tests of phonemic and semantic fluency.
A study following 837 people with MCI, of whom 414 (49.5%) had at least one vascular risk factor, has found that those with risk factors such as high blood pressure, diabetes, cerebrovascular disease and high cholesterol were twice as likely to develop Alzheimer's disease. Over five years, 52% of those with risk factors developed Alzheimer's, compared to 36% of those with no risk factors In total, 298 people (35.6%) developed Alzheimer's.
Adding to the growing evidence that social activity helps prevent age-related cognitive decline, a longitudinal study involving 1,138 older adults (mean age 80) has found that those who had the highest levels of social activity (top 10%) experienced only a quarter of the rate of cognitive decline experienced by the least socially active individuals (bottom 10%). The participants were followed for up to 12 years (mean of 5 years).
A survey of 257 epileptic patients and five clinicians has revealed that while patients ranked memory loss as their second-most important concern on a list of 20 potential medical or social concerns, memory loss was ranked only 12th by the clinicians. Both groups agreed that having a seizure unexpectedly was the No. 1 concern, and there was reasonable agreement on many other issues (patients' five most frequent concerns matched the clinicians’ seven most frequent concerns), but memory was a big worry that simply didn’t come up for clinicians.
What makes one person so much better than another in picking up a new motor skill, like playing the piano or driving or typing? Brain imaging research has now revealed that one of the reasons appears to lie in the production of a brain chemical called GABA, which inhibits neurons from responding.
Comparison of young adults (mean age 24.5) and older adults (mean age 69.1) in a visual memory test involving multitasking has pinpointed the greater problems older adults have with multitasking. The study involved participants viewing a natural scene and maintaining it in mind for 14.4 seconds. In the middle of the maintenance period, an image of a face popped up and participants were asked to determine its sex and age. They were then asked to recall the original scene.
The mental differences between a novice and an expert are only beginning to be understood, but two factors thought to be of importance are automaticity (the process by which a procedure becomes so practiced that it no longer requires conscious thought) and chunking (the unitizing of related bits of information into one tightly integrated unit — see my recent blog post on working memory). A new study adds to our understanding of this process by taking images of the brains of professional and amateur players of the Japanese chess-like game of shogi.
Most memory research has concerned itself with learning over time, but many memories, of course, become fixed in our mind after only one experience. The mechanism by which we acquire knowledge from single events is not well understood, but a new study sheds some light on it.
Binge drinking is, unfortunately, most common among adolescents (12-20 years). But this is a time when brains are still developing. Does this make them more vulnerable to the detrimental effects of excessive alcohol?