America�s Aging Workforce Posing New Opportunities and Challenges for Companies
[19 September 2005 - The Conference Board] Some 64 million baby boomers are poised to retire in large numbers by the end of this decade which is both a challenge and major opportunity for corporations, according to a report released today by The Conference Board. ... More older workers want to remain in their jobs for both personal fulfillment and financial reasons. In a related forthcoming study from The Conference Board, more than half (55 percent) of older employees surveyed said they were not planning to retire because they find their jobs interesting. Significantly, 74 percent also cited not having sufficient financial resources as a reason they were continuing to work, and 60 percent cited the need for medical benefits. ...

Need for Skilled Workers Is Fast Approaching
[12 September 2005 - ThirdAge] Retirement meant anything but kicking back for John Sayles. At age 69, six months after his retirement party, his company asked him to join a team of engineers in war-torn Baghdad, where he worked 12-hour days, seven days a week on a reconstruction project. "It's the best of all worlds," said Sayles, now 71, a planner who still consults occasionally for the Iowa-based firm from which he retired, Stanley Consultants Inc. "You never know when the phone rings who it's going to be." Programs that tap retirees' skills and keep older workers on the job longer would seem to be a natural solution to the looming shortage of skilled workers related to the baby boomer generation's approaching retirement. ...

Mental declines can be reversed - report shows
[15 September 2005 - EurekAlert!] As we get beyond retirement age, most of us will not be as mentally sharp as we once were. But a researcher at the University of Alberta says most people have the ability to reverse the mental declines that come with aging. "Can we reverse mental declines? Well, for most of us, the answer is yes, and I think that is definitely exciting and encouraging news," said Dr. Dennis Foth, a professor in the University of Alberta Faculty of Extension and the academic director of the U of A's Certificate in Adult and Continuing Education. Foth and his research colleague, Dr. Gordon Thompson of the University of Saskatchewan, also found in their literature review that mental declines related to aging are not universal (they affect some more than others), and they are not pervasive (the declines normally affect different parts of our cognitive capacities to varying degrees). Foth said mental declines are pathological for about 10 per cent of the general population over the age of 65, and not much can be done at this time to overcome the debilitating cognitive effects of diseases that affect the brain, such as Alzheimer's disease. But for the other 90 per cent of the population, cognitive decline need not be inevitable. "A lifetime of good mental habits pays off," Foth said. "People who are curious at a young age are more likely to be mentally active and stay active as they age. And we found it is never too late to start. With a little effort, even people in their 70s and 80s can see dramatic improvements in their cognitive skills." There are many different types of classes and mental exercises that people can do to keep their minds vibrant, Foth said, but the trick to getting more people to maintain or even improve their cognitive abilities is "ecological validity". ...

Memory loss in older adults due to distractions, not inability to focus
[11 September 2005 - EurekAlert!] The short-term memory problems that accompany normal aging are associated with an inability to filter out surrounding distractions, not problems with focusing attention, according to a study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. Although older patients often report difficulty tuning out distractions, this is the first hard evidence from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies of the brain that memory failure owes more to interference from irrelevant information than to an inability to focus on relevant information. ...

Mental exercises keep you sharp while aging
[9 September 2005 - myDNA News] As we age, maintaining mental acuity becomes a paramount concern as quality of life, rather than years of life, becomes the essence. Neuroscience researchers have discovered an active lifestyle plays an important role for keeping your brain sharp. While this revelation comes as no surprise, researchers now include the need for regular mental exercise in addition to daily physical activity and a healthy diet. In findings presented this week at the British Association's Festival of Science, Professor Ian Robertson, dean of research at the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience remarked, "Neuroscience researchers have made important discoveries that will help keep our brains functioning optimally." ... In one study reported at the festival, 3000 individuals, aged 65 to 94, were trained in memory strategies, mind-stimulating computer games, or problem-solving instruction and then compared to a control group who did not receive the training. On average, each subject in the study improved the equivalent of 7 to 14 years worth of mental aging. ...

Related story from the BA: Window on the mind
Related story from the BBC: Keeping ageing brains on top form

Brain activity in youth could give rise to Alzheimer's disease
[2 September 2005 - Record - Washington University in St. Louis] Using five different medical imaging techniques to study the brain activity of 764 people, including those with Alzheimer's disease, those on the brink of dementia, and healthy individuals, University researchers have found that the areas of the brain that young, healthy people use when daydreaming are the same areas that fail in people who have Alzheimer's disease. On the basis of their data, the researchers are proposing a hypothesis that Alzheimer's disease may be due to abnormalities in the regions of the brain that operate the "default state." This is the term used to describe the cognitive state people defer to when musing, daydreaming or thinking to themselves. ...