Volunteer service, such as tutoring children, can help older adults delay or reverse declining brain function, according to a study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the researchers found that seniors participating in a youth mentoring program made gains in key brain regions that support cognitive abilities important to planning and organizing one’s daily life. The study is the first of its kind to demonstrate that valuable social service programs, such as Experience Corps—a program designed to both benefit children and older adults’ health—can have the added benefits of improving the cognitive abilities of older adults, enhancing their quality of life. The study is published in the December issue of the Journals of Gerontology: Medical Sciences.
About 78 million Americans were born from 1946 to 1964. Individuals of retirement age are the fastest-growing sector of the U.S. population, so there is great interest in preserving their cognitive and physical abilities, especially given the societal cost of the alternative. [continue reading…]
Amazing, watch a mother to be have a MR scan of her baby. Link to read more about this new brain study at London’s Hammersmith Hospital. Using the scans doctors say they expect better diagnoses of brain disorders, including malformations, growth problems or injuries that can lead to cerebral palsy and sometimes autism.
Most of us in the developed world now have relationships with computers – and access to information and entertainment – that we could not have dreamed about even a decade or so ago. We spend our days sifting emails and browsing the internet, then relax by tweeting or networking online and playing computer games, sometimes all at the same time.
All this, according to Dr Gary Small of UCLA, is changing us. Dr Small, one of America’s leading neurologists, has written a book, iBrain – Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind. If you think our incessant use of the Internet, Blackberrys, iPods, text-messaging and video games has changed our lives and our children’s lives, here’s some breaking news: Technology has not only altered our lives, it’s altered our brains.
Dr. Gary Small on CBS News
Neuroscientist Gary Small tells CBS News’ Daniel Sieberg how technology may be making us smarter.
From discovering how to help teens to grow up (in the previous post) we move on to find out more about teenagers brains. Parents have long suspected that the brains of their teenagers function differently than those of adults. With the advent of magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, we have begun to appreciate how the brain continues to develop structurally through adolescence and on into adulthood. High emotionality is a characteristic of adolescents and researchers are trying to understand how ‘emotional areas’ of the brain differ between adults and adolescents. [continue reading…]
