Group items tagged

(50.4 percent) of cases are mild

the pooled percentage was 45.2 percent for the combined group of mild AD dementia and MCI that later progressed to AD.

We found that approximately 45 percent of all those who are cognitively impaired or diagnosed with AD-dementia had early AD.

Diagnosis and severity were assessed by consensus dementia review.

According to the researchers the finding that half of the people living with AD have mild disease underscores the need for research and interventions to slow decline or prevent progression of this burdensome disease.

The researchers believe that most people who have AD are still at a stage when there is still some preserved quality of life.

“Many other studies have shown an association between obesity and an increased risk of dementia. These findings demonstrate the complexity of research into risk factors for dementia and it is important to note that BMI is a crude measure – not necessarily an indicator of health. It’s also not clear whether other factors could have affected these results.”

The best protection against dementia, he added, is “eating a healthy, balanced diet, exercising regularly, not smoking, and keeping blood pressure in check”.

People who have type 2 diabetes are about twice as likely to get Alzheimer’s, and people who have diabetes and are treated with insulin are also more likely to get Alzheimer’s, suggesting elevated insulin plays a role in Alzheimer’s. In fact, many studies have found that elevated insulin, or “hyperinsulinemia,” significantly increases your risk of Alzheimer’s. On the other hand, people with type 1 diabetes, who don’t make insulin at all, are also thought to have a higher risk of Alzheimer’s. How could these both be true?

Schilling posits this happens because of the insulin-degrading enzyme, a product of insulin that breaks down both insulin and amyloid proteins in the brain—the same proteins that clump up and lead to Alzheimer’s disease. People who don’t have enough insulin, like those whose bodies’ ability to produce insulin has been tapped out by diabetes, aren’t going to make enough of this enzyme to break up those brain clumps. Meanwhile, in people who use insulin to treat their diabetes and end up with a surplus of insulin, most of this enzyme gets used up breaking that insulin down, leaving not enough enzyme to address those amyloid brain clumps.

this can happen even in people who don’t have diabetes yet—who are in a state known as “prediabetes.” It simply means your blood sugar is higher than normal, and it’s something that affects roughly 86 million Americans.

In a 2012 study, Roberts broke nearly 1,000 people down into four groups based on how much of their diet came from carbohydrates. The group that ate the most carbs had an 80 percent higher chance of developing mild cognitive impairment—a pit stop on the way to dementia—than those who ate the smallest amount of carbs.

“It’s hard to be sure at this stage, what an ‘ideal’ diet would look like,” she said. “There’s a suggestion that a Mediterranean diet, for example, may be good for brain health.”

there are several theories out there to explain the connection between high blood sugar and dementia. Diabetes can also weaken the blood vessels, which increases the likelihood that you’ll have ministrokes in the brain, causing various forms of dementia. A high intake of simple sugars can make cells, including those in the brain, insulin resistant, which could cause the brain cells to die. Meanwhile, eating too much in general can cause obesity. The extra fat in obese people releases cytokines, or inflammatory proteins that can also contribute to cognitive deterioration, Roberts said. In one study by Gottesman, obesity doubled a person’s risk of having elevated amyloid proteins in their brains later in life.

even people who don’t have any kind of diabetes should watch their sugar intake, she said.

as these and other researchers point out, decisions we make about food are one risk factor we can control. And it’s starting to look like decisions we make while we’re still relatively young can affect our future cognitive health.

“Alzheimer’s is like a slow-burning fire that you don’t see when it starts,” Schilling said. It takes time for clumps to form and for cognition to begin to deteriorate. “By the time you see the signs, it’s way too late to put out the fire.”

The cerebrum has two halves, or hemispheres, that are further divided into four regions, or lobes. The frontal lobes, located behind the forehead, are involved with speech, thought, learning, emotion, and movement.

Behind them are the parietal lobes, which process sensory information such as touch, temperature, and pain.

At the rear of the brain are the occipital lobes, dealing with vision

Lastly, there are the temporal lobes, near the temples, which are involved with hearing and memory.

The second-largest part of the brain is the cerebellum, which sits beneath the back of the cerebrum.

diencephalon, located in the core of the brain. A complex of structures roughly the size of an apricot, its two major sections are the thalamus and hypothalamus

The brain is extremely sensitive and delicate, and so it requires maximum protection, which is provided by the hard bone of the skull and three tough membranes called meninges.

Want more proof that the brain is extraordinary? Look no further than the blood-brain barrier.

This led scientists to learn that the brain has an ingenious, protective layer. Called the blood-brain barrier, it’s made up of special, tightly bound cells that together function as a kind of semi-permeable gate throughout most of the organ. It keeps the brain environment safe and stable by preventing some toxins, pathogens, and other harmful substances from entering the brain through the bloodstream, while simultaneously allowing oxygen and vital nutrients to pass through.

One in five Americans suffers from some form of neurological damage, a wide-ranging list that includes stroke, epilepsy, and cerebral palsy, as well as dementia.

Alzheimer’s disease, which is characterized in part by a gradual progression of short-term memory loss, disorientation, and mood swings, is the most common cause of dementia. It is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States

50 million people suffer from Alzheimer’s or some form of dementia. While there are a handful of drugs available to mitigate Alzheimer’s symptoms, there is no cure.

Unfortunately, negative attitudes toward people who suffer from mental illness are widespread. The stigma attached to mental illness can create feelings of shame, embarrassment, and rejection, causing many people to suffer in silence.

In the United States, where anxiety disorders are the most common forms of mental illness, only about 40 percent of sufferers receive treatment. Anxiety disorders often stem from abnormalities in the brain’s hippocampus and prefrontal cortex.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, is a mental health condition that also affects adults but is far more often diagnosed in children.

ADHD is characterized by hyperactivity and an inability to stay focused.

Depression is another common mental health condition. It is the leading cause of disability worldwide and is often accompanied by anxiety. Depression can be marked by an array of symptoms, including persistent sadness, irritability, and changes in appetite.

The good news is that in general, anxiety and depression are highly treatable through various medications—which help the brain use certain chemicals more efficiently—and through forms of therapy

The result: reassurance and relief. Everything was in the normal range for her age, and she registered as superior on the ability to perform tasks and solve problems.

Simple tests done in eight to 12 minutes in a doctor’s office can determine whether memory issues are normal for one’s age or are problematic and warrant a more thorough evaluation.

more than half of older adults with signs of memory loss never see a doctor about it

“Early evaluation and identification of people with dementia may help them receive care earlier,”

“It can help families make plans for care, help with day-to-day tasks, including medication administration, and watch for future problems that can occur.”

Both tests measure orientation to time, date and place; attention and concentration; ability to calculate; memory; language; and conceptual thinking.

its score can be skewed by a person’s level of education, cultural background, a learning or speech disorder, and language fluency

According to the NFL, a panel of neuropsychologists that was formed recently to propose a new testing regime to the court includes two female and three Black doctors.

The NFL noted that the norms were developed in medicine “to stop bias in testing, not perpetrate it.”

The binary race norms, when they are used in the testing, assumes that Black patients start with worse cognitive function than whites and other non-Blacks.

The awards so far have averaged $516,000 for the 379 players with early-stage dementia and $715,000 for the 207 players with moderate dementia.

he settlement ended thousands of lawsuits that accused the NFL of long hiding what it knew about the link between concussions and traumatic brain injury.

When we learn something—even as simple as someone’s name—we form connections between neurons in the brain. These synapses create new circuits between nerve cells, essentially remapping the brain.

The sheer number of possible connections gives the brain unfathomable flexibility—each of the brain’s 100 billion nerve cells can have 10,000 connections to other nerve cells.

Huganir and his team discovered that when mice are exposed to traumatic events, the level of neuronal receptors for glutamate increases at synapses in the amygdala, the fear center of the brain, and encodes the fear associated with the memory. Removing those receptors, however, reduces the strength of these connections, essentially erasing the fear component of the trauma but leaving the memory.

Now Huganir and his lab are developing drugs that target those receptors. The hope is that inactivating the receptors could help people with post-traumatic stress syndrome by reducing the fear associated with a traumatic memory, while strengthening them could improve learning, particularly in people with cognitive dysfunction or Alzheimer’s disease.

Dementia (di-men-sha): A loss of brain function that can be caused by a variety of disorders affecting the brain. Symptoms include forgetfulness, impaired thinking and judgment, personality changes, agitation and loss of emotional control. Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s disease and inadequate blood flow to the brain can all cause dementia. Most types of dementia are irreversible.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): A disorder in which your “fight or flight,” or stress, response stays switched on, even when you have nothing to flee or battle. The disorder usually develops after an emotional or physical trauma, such as a mugging, physical abuse or a natural disaster. Symptoms include nightmares, insomnia, angry outbursts, emotional numbness, and physical and emotional tension.

The key difference between bilinguals and monolinguals may be more basic: a heightened ability to monitor the environment. “Bilinguals have to switch languages quite often — you may talk to your father in one language and to your mother in another language,” says Albert Costa, a researcher at the University of Pompeu Fabra in Spain. “It requires keeping track of changes around you in the same way that we monitor our surroundings when driving.”

individuals with a higher degree of bilingualism — measured through a comparative evaluation of proficiency in each language — were more resistant than others to the onset of dementia and other symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease: the higher the degree of bilingualism, the later the age of onset.

While some advantages, such as lack of dementia, appear late in life, others may appear early only to disappear thereafter. Research on multilingual minds is, itself, still in a kind of adolescence, but it is a promising one

Oversleeping — typically defined as more than nine or 10 hours in research studies — is associated with certain health risks, including stroke, obesity, depression, diabetes, heart disease and dementia. However, it’s not clear if oversleeping causes these conditions or if it’s just an indicator that something else is wrong.

“In other words, we don’t know if it’s the long sleep that’s causing problems over time, or if some underlying health problem is causing someone to sleep longer,”

“If someone seems to be an unusually long sleeper, it’s possible that they are simply wired to need more sleep,” Wu said. (That said, it can’t hurt to mention it to your doctor if you have some concerns.)

“A number of factors, such as medical conditions, medication side effects, and undiagnosed sleep disorders, can lead to poor sleep quality and non-restful sleep,” she added.

if sleep quantity isn’t the issue, then sleep quality probably is. Conditions like sleep apnea can disrupt sleep and leave you feeling fatigued even after spending ample time in bed.

“Poor quality sleep means that an individual does not get to the deeper stages of sleep or REM sleep, which restore the brain and body and makes you feel refreshed and rejuvenated the next day,”

“Get lots of sunlight, get physically active — or at least decrease long stretches of sitting — and go out of your way to plan some fun and social activities,” Wu said. “Make efforts to prioritize physical and mental health. You may find yourself waking up with more energy after making these changes.”

Though it remains unclear at what point the ancestors of modern humans first started to develop spoken language, we know that our Homo sapiens predecessors emerged around 150,000–200,000 years ago. So, Prof. Pagel explains, complex speech is likely at least as old as that

A study led by researchers from Lund University in Sweden found that committed language students experienced growth in the hippocampus, a brain region associated with learning and spatial navigation, as well as in parts of the cerebral cortex, or the outmost layer of the brain.

In fact, researchers have drawn many connections between bilingualism or multilingualism and the maintenance of brain health

Multiple studies, for instance, have found that bilingualism can protect the brain against Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.

Being bilingual has other benefits, too, such as training the brain to process information efficiently while expending only the necessary resources on the tasks at hand.

Research now shows that her assessment was absolutely correct — the language that we use does change not only the way we think and express ourselves, but also how we perceive and interact with the world.

Language holds such power over our minds, decision-making processes, and lives, so Broditsky concludes by encouraging us to consider how we might use it to shape the way we think about ourselves and the world.

Others have found that paranormal and religious believers are more prone to pareidolia than skeptics and nonbelievers. Although believers and nonbelievers had equivalent sensitivity to faces, the paranormal and religious believers had lower thresholds for reporting that a face was present than nonbelievers did, possibly due to being more open to the suggestion that the images might contain faces.

Pareidolia can be exacerbated in cases of fatigue and in some neurological diseases, such as Lewy body dementia

It may not be a strictly human phenomenon either. Research has shown that rhesus monkeys see illusory facial features on inanimate objects such as toasters or sliced vegetables.

Pareidolia extends beyond human likenesses: In 2007, a "monkey tree" in Singapore attracted thousands of visitors, who swore that a bizarrely shaped callus growing on a tree was a manifestation of either the Chinese deity Sun Wukong (also known as the Monkey King) or the Hindu monkey god Hanuman.

the brain makes much ado about nothing.

In this study, a higher consumption of fish seemed to make a big difference in keeping your brain young.

People who ate a diet close to the MIND diet saw a 53% lower risk of developing Alzheimer's.

Even people who ate the MIND diet "most" (as opposed to "all") of the time saw a 35% reduced chance of developing the disease.

It has also been shown as a key to helping you live longer. It helps you manage your weight better and can lower your risk for cancer, and cardiovascular diseases.

"If you could clear senescent cells, you perhaps could treat age-related diseases as a group rather than individually," said Jan van Deursen, senior author of the paper and a professor in the departments of biochemistry and pediatric and adolescent medicine at Mayo.

When cells become senescent, they produce harmful compounds such as those that cause inflammation. Chronic tissue inflammation with aging is thought to underlie dementia, atherosclerosis and diabetes, among other ills,

Because senescence is believed to have developed as a defense against cancer, in which cells divide uncontrollably, simply halting the process could be dangerous. But scientists have wondered for decades if the damage inflicted by senescent cells could be stopped if they were removed from the body altogether, or if the harmful substances they produced were neutralized.

One study found that men who consumed eight to 14 drinks a week had a 59% lower risk of heart failure compared with those who didn't drink.

But experts warn that regularly drinking more than that can cause cardiovascular damage instead, raising blood pressure, increasing the risk of hemorrhagic stroke and leading to cardiomyopathy, a dangerous enlargement of the heart.

Benefits of moderate drinking, defined as one drink a day for women, two for men. •Reduces the risk of coronary heart disease by 30% to 35%. Increases HDL 'good' cholesterol. •Prevents platelets from sticking together, reducing blood clots, and lowers the risk of congestive heart failure. •Cuts the risk of heart attack by 40% to 50% in healthy men. •Reduces the risk of stroke and dementia.

Cancer risks linked to drinking. (Risks vary with the amount of alcohol consumed.)•Raises the risk of oral and pharyngeal cancer by 20% and risk of breast cancer by 8% among people who have one or fewer drinks a day. •Raises risk of oral cancers 73%, risk of liver cancer 20% and risk of breast cancer 31% among people who have two to three drinks per day. •Associated with a fivefold increase in risk of oral, pharyngeal and esophageal cancers in people who have four or more drinks per day. •Raises the risk of colorectal cancer by 52%, pancreatic cancer by 22%, breast cancer by 46%.

Nate Silver, who runs the political Web site FiveThirtyEight, now part of the New York Times, uses many of Tufte’s maxims in the site’s design. Silver told me that he tries to keep the “data-ink” ratio of his current site very high, meaning most of the pixels on the screen show actual numbers or data points; he also thinks of the site’s design in terms of “small multiples,” another Tufte neologism that refers to a series of related numbers that reveal subtle differences over time. “Tufte treats data like good writing,” he said. “You have a certain thought—how clearly and beautifully are you conveying it?”

Good design, then, is not about making dull numbers somehow become magically exhilarating, it is about picking the right numbers in the first place. “It’s about data that matters to you,”

when faced with a change that has the potential to make us more likely to survive, some brains are able to adapt more easily than others.

Daniel Amen has studied over 63,000 brains using brain imaging to study blood flow and activity patterns.

One interesting conclusion of his studies is that a healthy brain is much better equipped to make positive changes and stick to them.

The discovery of brain plasticity has proven that you can help people change their brains almost immediately, by providing an environment to support learning

Even a few drinks a week can reduce overall brain function and create areas of reduced brain function.

brain learns better when it is healthy, adopting a healthier lifestyle can help learners develop brains that are more receptive to change and new ideas.

Prolonged exposure to high blood pressure not only restricts blood flow to the brain, but increase the risk of dementia, heart attack and stroke.

a physical pattern, in the form of neural connections, is formed in the brain. Every time we go over this pattern by revisiting this thought, we make the behavior stronger.

Brains with a high degree of new activity tend to stay that way. Brains that are slow to learn new things gradually lose some of their ability to change.

In our sleep-deprived world, the average adult is walking around in a brain-induced fog. The brain uses sleep to rebuild and reorganize. Sleep deprivation can result in lower brain performance and less ability to change.

Counter to previous beliefs, meditation has been shown to activate the cerebral cortex, which is the seat of conscious thought.