Following on from earlier research suggesting that simply talking helps keep your mind sharp at all ages, a new study involving 192 undergraduates indicates that the type of talking makes a difference. Engaging in brief (10 minute) conversations in which participants were simply instructed to get to know another person resulted in boosts to their executive function (the processes involved in working memory, planning, decision-making, and so on).
Latest Research News
We can see shapes and we can feel them, but we can’t hear a shape. However, in a dramatic demonstration of just how flexible our brain is, researchers have devised a way of coding spatial relations in terms of sound properties such as frequency, and trained blindfolded people to recognize shapes by their sounds. They could then match what they heard to shapes they felt. Furthermore, they were able to generalize from their training to novel shapes.
A Chinese study involving 153 older men (55+; average age 72), of whom 47 had mild cognitive impairment, has found that 10 of those in the MCI group developed probable Alzheimer's disease within a year. These men also had low testosterone, high blood pressure, and elevated levels of the ApoE4 protein.
The findings support earlier indications that low testosterone is associated with increased risk of Alzheimer's in men, but it’s interesting to note the combination with high blood pressure and having the ApoE4 gene. I look forward to a larger study.
Confirming earlier indications from small studies, a very large nationwide survey has found that people who have had cancer are 40% more likely to experience memory problems that interfere with daily functioning.
The U.S. study involved nearly 10,000 people aged 40 and older, of whom 1,305 (13.3%) reported they had cancer or a history of cancer. Of these, 14% answered yes to the question "Are you limited in any way because of difficulty remembering or because you experience periods of confusion?" Of those who did not have a history of cancer, 8% answered yes to this question.
Because people with damage to their hippocampus are sometimes impaired at remembering spatial information even over extremely short periods of time, it has been thought that the hippocampus is crucial for spatial information irrespective of whether the task is a working memory or a long-term memory task. This is in contrast to other types of information. In general, the hippocampus (and related structures in the mediotemporal lobe) is assumed to be involved in long-term memory, not working memory.
A long-running study involving 299 older adults (average age 78) has found that those who walked at least 72 blocks during a week of recorded activity (around six to nine miles) had greater gray matter volume nine years later. Gray matter does shrink as we get older, so this is not about growth so much as counteracting decline. Walking more than 72 blocks didn’t appear to confer any additional benefit (in terms of gray matter volume).
Monitoring of 11 football players at a high school in Indiana, who wore helmets equipped with sensors that recorded impart, has revealed the problem of head injuries is deeper than was thought. Brain scans and cognitive tests, in addition to the impact data, found that some players who hadn't been diagnosed with concussions nevertheless had developed changes in brain function, correlated with cognitive impairment. The findings point to the dangers of repeated impact, regardless of whether consciousness is lost.
Beginning in 1971, healthy older adults in Gothenburg, Sweden, have been participating in a longitudinal study of their cognitive health. The first H70 study started in 1971 with 381 residents of Gothenburg who were 70 years old; a new one began in 2000 with 551 residents and is still ongoing. For the first cohort (born in 1901-02), low scores on non-memory tests turned out to be a good predictor of dementia; however, these tests were not predictive for the generation born in 1930.
I love cognitive studies on bees. The whole notion that those teeny-tiny brains are capable of the navigation and communication feats bees demonstrate is so wonderful. Now a new study finds that, just like us, aging bees find it hard to remember the location of a new home.
A meta-analysis of 242 articles assessing the math skills of 1,286,350 people found no difference between the two sexes. This was confirmed in an analysis of the data from several large surveys of American adolescents (the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth, the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, the Longitudinal Study of American Youth, and the National Assessment of Educational Progress).