Training in a mental imagery technique has been found to help multiple sclerosis patients in two memory domains often affected by the disease: autobiographical memory and episodic future thinking.
Latest Research News
Can you help protect yourself from the memory of traumatic events? A new study suggests that, by concentrating on concrete details as you live through the event, you can reduce the number of intrusive memories later experienced.
When you're reading a picture book to a very young child, it's easy to think it's obvious what picture, or part of a picture, is being talked about. But you know what all the words mean. It's not so easy when some of the words are new to you, and the open pages have more than one picture. A recent study has looked at the effect on word learning of having one vs two illustrations on a 2-page open spread.
The American Academy of Pediatric now supports children and teens engaging in light physical activity and returning to school as they recover. It also now advises against complete removal of electronic devices, such as television, computers and smartphones, following a concussion.
"We've learned that keeping kids in dark rooms and eliminating all cognitive and physical activity actually worsened a lot of kids' symptoms rather than improving them."
A very long-running study involving 290 people at risk of Alzheimer's has found that, in those 81 people who developed MCI or dementia, subtle changes in cognitive test scores were evident 11 to 15 years before the onset of clear cognitive impairment. They also showed increases in the rate of change of tau protein in cerebrospinal fluid an average of 34.4 years (for t-tau, or total Tau) and 13 years (for a modified version called p-tau) before the beginning of cognitive impairment.
Although first reported in 1816, the fact that the brain is surrounded by lymphatic vessels, which connect the brain and the immune system, was only rediscovered in 2015.
A 2017 review of research has concluded that, although the number of studies into the cognitive effects of the cocoa bean is limited and has produced mixed results, on balance the evidence points to positive cognitive effects from regular intake of “cocoa flavanols”, as well as immediate benefits from consumption.
A study involving 74 older adults (70+), of whom 3 had mild dementia, 33 were cognitively normal and 38 had mild cognitive impairment, has found that high levels of "good" cholesterol and low levels of "bad" cholesterol correlated with lower levels of the amyloid-beta plaques in the brain (a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease).
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-12/uoc--hga122613.php
A study involving mice lacking a master clock gene called Bmal1 has found that as the mice aged, their brains showed patterns of damage similar to those seen in Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative disorders. Many of the injuries seemed to be caused by free radicals. Several key antioxidant enzymes, which usually neutralize and help clear free radicals from the brain, have been found to peak in the middle of the day in healthy mice, but not in these mice lacking Bmal1.
A brain imaging study of 162 healthy babies (2-25 months) has found that those who carried the ApoE4 gene (60 of the 162) tended to have increased brain growth in areas in the frontal lobe, and decreased growth in several areas in the middle and rear of the brain (precuneus, posterior/middle cingulate, lateral temporal, and medial occipitotemporal regions) — areas that tend to be affected in Alzheimer’s disease.