A study involving 66 healthy young adults (average age 24) has revealed that different individuals have distinct brain connectivity patterns that are associated with different ways of experiencing and remembering the past.
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A new issue for parents to stress over is the question of whether reading digital books with your toddler or preschooler is worse than reading traditional print books. Help on this complicated question comes from a new study involving 102 toddlers aged 17 to 26 months, whose parents were randomly assigned to read two commercially available electronic books or two print books with identical content with their toddler (this was achieved by printing out screenshots of the electronic books).
One important reason for the greater cognitive problems commonly experienced as we age, is our increasing difficulty in ignoring distracting and irrelevant information. But it may be that in some circumstances that propensity can be used to help memory.
Alzheimer's gene linked to damage to brain connections
A study has found that synapses in people who had died with Alzheimer's contained clumps of clusterin and clumps of amyloid beta. These protein clumps may be damaging the links between neurons.
Those with the APOE4 gene had more clusterin and amyloid beta clumps than people with Alzheimer's without the risk gene. Those without dementia symptoms had less of the damaging proteins in their synapses.
A diet containing compounds found in green tea and carrots reversed Alzheimer's-like symptoms in mice genetically programmed to develop the disease. The two compounds were EGCG (epigallocatechin-3-gallate), a key ingredient in green tea, and FA (ferulic acid), which is found in carrots, tomatoes, rice, wheat and oats.
Analysis of data from the Age-Related Eye Disease Study (AREDS) and AREDS2, involving a total of around 8,000 older adults, has found that those with the greatest adherence to the Mediterranean diet had the lowest risk of cognitive impairment. High fish and vegetable consumption appeared to have the greatest protective effect. At 10 years, AREDS2 participants with the highest fish consumption had the slowest rate of cognitive decline.
Despite the popularity of brainstorming as a strategy for producing ideas and new perspectives, it appears that participation in a group actually reduces the number of ideas produced (compared to the number of ideas that would be produced if the participants thought independently)1.
Three possible explanations have been investigated:
Mice given decaffeinated green tea and regular exercise lost weight and improved their health after 16 weeks. Specifically, they reduced body mass by 27% (on average), reduced abdominal fat by 37%; reduced blood glucose level by 17%, plasma insulin level by 65%, and insulin resistance by 65%..
Neither green tea alone, nor exercise alone, produced such significant changes. The amount of green tea was a lot: the equivalent of 8-10 cups a day. Decaffeination may not be important; it was done to keep the effects of caffeine out of the study.
A mouse study has found that long-term physical activity increased levels of two proteins in the mitochondria of their heart. It’s thought this might help explain why regular exercise improves cardiovascular health.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-02/cfgr-etc021114.php
A survey of 7796 older adults (65+) living in three geographic areas in England has allowed us to compare dementia rates over time, with an identical survey having been taken between 1989 and 1994. The overall prevalence of dementia fell significantly, from 8.3% to 6.5%.
The finding provides further evidence that a cohort effect exists in dementia prevalence.
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2813%2961570-6/fulltext