Toyota and "Brain Age" Inventor Team To Make Cars More Senior-Citizen-Friendly

[23 December 2007 - Edmunds Inside Line - TOKYO] As drivers age, they may find it increasingly difficult to stay alert and react quickly while driving. Now a video game expert is heading a research effort with Toyota that aims to make cars that are better adapted to the needs of senior-citizen drivers. The inventor of the popular Nintendo "Brain Age" series, Professor Ryuta Kawashima of Japan's Tohoku University is hoping to get the results of the R&D into cars by 2020 or sooner. More

PBS Special Shows How to Sharpen Brain With Workouts

[5 December 2007 - Bloomberg] Did you sleep well last night -- or can't you remember? A pair of PBS shows offers hope for those suffering from restless nights and/or dimming brains. Contrary to popular belief, dull thinking is not a preordained part of old age, according to "The Brain Fitness Program,'" which airs Dec. 7 at 10 p.m. New York time. However, you do have to work hard to keep your gray matter from taking on the consistency of that oatmeal you've been eating for a healthy heart. Host Peter Coyote says the brain has a wonderful ability to stay sharp and even "rewire'' itself after suffering catastrophic damage, including strokes. A panel of experts, including Dr. Michael Merzenich from the University of California, San Francisco, promises that unlike the proverbial old dog, the brain can learn new tricks right up until the very end. More

The aging brain: Failure to communicate

[5 December 2007 - Howard Hughes Medical Institute via EurekAlert!] A team of Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers has shown that normal aging disrupts communication between different regions of the brain. The new research, which used advanced medical imaging techniques to look at the brain function of 93 healthy individuals from 18 to 93 years old, shows that this decline happens even in the absence of serious pathologies like Alzheimer's disease. Researchers have known for quite some time that normal aging slowly degrades bundles of axons in the central nervous system that transmit critical signals. “Our study now shows that cognitive decline in aging may be linked to disruption of communication between different regions of the brain,” said Buckner, who is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Harvard University. The new research, published December 6, 2007, in the journal Neuron, begins to reveal how simply growing old can affect the higher-level brain systems that govern cognition. “We may have caught the failure of communication in the act,” said Buckner. More