You, Your Brain and Healthy Aging
A Report From the National Council on Aging/American Society of Aging 2006 Conference
[29 March 2006 - ageing as exile? blog - By Steve Dahlberg] Brain fitness is important for optimal aging, behavior and health. What you can do for your brain as you get older - and what your brain can do for you - is becoming all the rage.

Neuroscientists are doing research that suggests that people can take deliberate steps toward developing healthier brains - at all ages. At the same time, those healthy brains can help delay the onset or severity of brain function decline, such as from dementia and stroke.

Researchers at the San Francisco, California-based Posit Science are seeking ways to help people deliberately develop their brains throughout their entire lifespan, not just in childhood and early adulthood. They say that brain fitness is key to quality of life, and they have developed an eight-week-long, software-based program that is designed to improve the brain's fitness.

"If we demand a lot of our brain, it will step up to the plate," says Henry Mahncke, Posit Science's vice president of research and outcomes. If we don't demand a lot, the brain will release those resources for other uses.

Mahncke says that although a few age-related changes in the brain are inevitable, people have control over important causes of brain function decline. Therefore, they can practice specific activities that may prevent or reverse brain function decline. This includes activities that:

• Challenge the brain to make fine distinctions.
• Include rewards and surprises.
• Require focused attention.
• Engage the brain with new and demanding tasks.
• Make people confront challenges rather than avoid them.

Just like exercising your physical muscles, brain function can be improved through regular practice. "Use it or lose it" is the cliche that's true when it comes to the brain and aging.

Posit Science researchers have found that participants using their computer-based training program have enhanced and sharpened their brain function. Virtually anyone can improve regardless of their starting point, according to Mahncke.

What can you do to improve your brain fitness? Challenge your mind, learn and practice a new skill, and engage in paper- and computer-based activities that allow you to practice your thinking skills.

Read more about the aging brain and maintaining positive cogntive health:

• The Myth of the Mid Life Crisis: It's time we stopped dismissing middle age as the beginning of the end. Research suggests that at 40, the brain's best years are still ahead.[16 January 2006 - Newsweek]
• Creativity By Choice, Not By Chance: A Mindset for Surviving the Ageing Workplace [April 2004 - Knowledge Management News]
• Brain Workouts May Tone Memory [5 August 2005 - Wired News]
• Governor Rell Announces Funding to Support People with Alzheimer�s Disease and Family Caregivers [16 Novermber 2004 - State of Connecticut]
• The Nun Study: How one scientist and 678 sisters are helping unlock the secrets of Alzheimer's [14 May 2001 - Time magazine]

Sharp as a Tack
[27 March 2006 - Forbes magazine] Aging minds can be made young again. New insights into the brain�s ability to rearrange itself, or �plasticity,� offer hope for fighting senility, Alzheimer�s and old age. Give Michael Merzenich 40 hours and he'll take ten years off your brain. He says. Merzenich, a professor of neuroscience at the University of California at San Francisco, has spent nearly his entire 35-year career divining the intricate electrophysiology of the brain. When he started his work, the reigning experts believed that our gray matter was hardwired, that once a human reaches adulthood, the mind does little more than fade away. But in the mid-1980s Merzenich started to prove the opposite, that brains are �plastic,� malleable, reprogrammable, capable of steady improvement through carefully designed exercises. Brain plasticity, the field that Merzenich helped pioneer, is now one of the hottest areas in medicine, one with hugely positive implications for an aging society. Six years ago 450 million people, or 7% of the world�s population, were over 65. By 2050, 16% of the world�s population, nearly 1.5 billion people, will have turned 65. Almost half of Americans older than 85 develop Alzheimer�s disease. ...

Plus: Six Ways to Keep Your Brain Sharp

New research data on the link between learning results and working memory
[13 March 2006 - EurekAlert!] A research project on the Working Memory and Cognition has reached its conclusion. This three-year project has concentrated on basic research into the essence of memory and learning, and its results can be applied to such things as predicting learning difficulties or successes and understanding their related factors, which within working memory hinder or promote learning at an individual level. The project was headed by Elisabet Service, a docent at the Department of Psychology at the University of Helsinki. Other members of the group were Jarmo Herkman, Virpi Kalakoski, Emilia Luotoniemi and Sini Maury, researchers from the Department of Psychology. The research is divided into two primary areas: the essence of language-related memory processes and the impact of expertise in working memory tasks concerning music. Poor short-term memory reveals an ineffective language learning process ...