For a Sharp Brain, Stimulation

[13 May 2008 - New York Times] AMERICANS may worry about heart disease, stroke and diabetes, but they downright dread Alzheimer’s disease, a recent survey found. For good reason. One in eight adults over 65 is affected by the disease. Those who are spared know they may end up with the burden of caring for a parent or a spouse who is affected. Even though the number of older adults with dementias is rising rapidly, only a few drugs that have been approved to treat symptoms are on the market, and they slow down the disease but do not cure it. Researchers, however, are more optimistic than ever about the potential of the aging brain, because recent evidence has challenged long-held beliefs by demonstrating that the brain can grow new nerve cells. "For a long time, we held the assumption that we’re born with all the nerve cells we’re ever going to have, and that the brain is not capable of generating new ones — that once these cells die we’re unable to replace them," said Molly V. Wagster, chief of the Neuropsychology of Aging branch of the National Institute on Aging. "Those assumptions have been challenged and put by the wayside." ... "Another thing that’s important as people get older is to maintain flexible attitudes and be willing to try new things," said K. Warner Schaie, who in 1956 started the Seattle Longitudinal Study, which follows the psychological development of participants through adulthood. "You have to expect things will shift over time and won’t be the same as when you were young. Those who manage to roll with the punches, and enjoy change rather than fighting it, tend to do well." More

Folding your arms can help your brain

[6 May 2008 - Canada.com] The mere act of folding your arms increases perseverance and activates an unconscious desire to succeed, new research shows. University students randomly assigned to sit with their arms crossed spent more time on an impossible-to-solve anagram, or word scramble, in one experiment, and came up with more correct solutions to solvable anagrams in another than those told to sit with their hands on their thighs. The study is the first to show that arm crossing affects people's thinking without them being consciously aware of it. Normally, it's thought that it's a psychological state that leads to a body movement. The study suggests it goes both ways, that a body movement also can trigger a psychological state. More

Elder Care Expo Featured Today on Twin Cities Live

[6 May 2008 - Elder Care Expos, LLC] Elder Care Expo Community Partnerships Manager Joe Groshens was a guest today on KSTP's "Twin Cities Live" TV show in St. Paul/Minneapolis. He shared highlights about what people can find at the Expo, how the Expo was inspired by his own family's story, and technology that people will find at the Expo that allows people to stay more independent. Watch the video clip online and join us May 9 and 10 at the Education Building of the Minnesota State Fairgrounds in St. Paul, Minn.

Creativity and Madness ... Quieting the Demons and Giving Art a Voice

On the topic of creativity, madness and mental illness, Tuesday's New York Times reviews two new books on this topic, including one by Marya Hornbacher, the author of the well-received book Wasted:

[29 April 2008 - New York Times] For scientists trying to parse the mystery of brain and mind, [Marya Hornbacher] is one more case of the possible link between mental illness and artistic creativity. With all our scans and neurotransmitters, we are not much closer to figuring out that relationship than was Lord Byron, who announced that poets are “all crazy” and left it at that. But effective drugs make the question more urgent now: would Virginia Woolf, medicated, have survived to write her final masterpiece, or would she have spent her extra years happily shopping? ... As for the central question of whether treating the illness impairs the creativity, Ms. Hornbacher weighs in firmly on the side of her meds, imperfect though they may be. “For me, the first sign of oncoming madness is that I’m unable to write.” Depression silences her; mania may flood her mind with glittering words, but they scatter before she can get them down. Only the prosaic morning meds (21 pills, at last count) will let her trap the words on the page. More

Memory Training Shown to Turn Up Brainpower

[29 April 2008 - New York Times] A new study has found that it may be possible to train people to be more intelligent, increasing the brainpower they had at birth. Until now, it had been widely assumed that the kind of mental ability that allows us to solve new problems without having any relevant previous experience -- what psychologists call fluid intelligence -- is innate and cannot be taught (though people can raise their grades on tests of it by practicing). But in the new study, researchers describe a method for improving this skill, along with experiments to prove it works. ... The results, published Monday in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were striking. Although the control groups also made gains, presumably because they had practice with the fluid intelligence tests, improvement in the trained groups was substantially greater. Moreover, the longer they trained, the higher their scores were. All performers, from the weakest to the strongest, showed significant improvement. More