Miami Brain Fitness

Depression and Risk for Dementia

admin — Fri, 03 May 2013 02:38:29 +0000

An article authored by a group at the University of Pittsburgh today published an article in the British Journal of Psychiatry confirming and extending our 2006 paper in the Archives of General Psychiatry showing that depression is related to an increased risk of developing dementia later in life. Our previous paper showed that having a diagnosis of depression increased someone’s risk of being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. The new study includes studies we didn’t include and expands the analysis to include risk for vascular dementia, a type of dementia related to problems with the blood vessels in the brain.

A post on the New York Times blog “The New Old Age” puts the studies in context and explains what they mean — thanks to Judith Graham for her cogent explanation of the importance of the new study. She quotes me as well as co-author David Loewenstein on the meaning of the new study. You can read her article here.

You can find the abstract of the new study here. (You need a subscription to read the full article.)

Our original paper in the Archives is available in a slightly different version (but full text) here.

Strength Training and the Brain

rlo — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 10:46:21 +0000

Lots of evidence points to the usefulness of aerobic exercise for maintaining and improving mental functioning (see a previous blog post here and an extensive review article here). It is not as clear, though, whether strength training has an effect. An article in JAMA Internal Medicine shows that even a modest amount of resistance training (60 minutes two times a week for 6 months) can improve cognitive function in older women with evidence of mild cognitive impairment (MCI). MCI is defined as a condition in which persons have clear evidence of below average cognitive function in an area such as memory and in addition report that they have memory difficulties. It’s considered an important condition in part because people with MCI are believed to be an increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

While other studies have shown that resistance training can help cognitive functioning, this study compared strength training with aerobic exercise (walking) and a less intense “balance and tone” intervention. The authors also studied the impact of their interventions on the brain using functional MRI (fMRI). Results showed that strength training was associated with improvements in cognitive function on several study measures, including an executive function measure (the Stroop task) and a memory task. In a subgroup of people who completed fMRI, the strength training was associated with changes in brain function during mental activity. The authors conclude that strength training can help to improve cognitive function in women with MCI, and may be a useful strategy in helping maintain cognitive function in persons at risk for decline.

Reference:

Nagamatsu, LS et al. (2012). Resistance training promotes cognitive and functional brain plasticity in seniors with probable mild cognitive impairment. JAMA Internal Medicine, 172, 666-668. Full article available without charge here.

Concentration

rlo — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 13:05:53 +0000

Maria Konnikova posts an interesting article in this past Sunday’s New York Times on the effects of undivided attention and mindfulness. In her post, she links concentration to Sherlock Holmes (perhaps because that’s a link to her forthcoming book), but she provides a nice if brief review of some of the effects of mindfulness training on neural connectivity (especially the default mode network that is implicated in cognitive decline with aging as well as several neurological disorders) and cognitive performance. The article is currently online here.

Cognitive Lifestyle and Neuroprotection

admin — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 12:56:16 +0000

A study from earlier this year sheds light on how being mentally active may confer protection for cognitive decline. Michael Valenzuela is a researcher whose work focuses on understanding the links between mental activity over someone’s entire life and their later function. In previous studies, he and his colleagues have shown that a summary measure of cognitive activity over a person’s entire life (including such things as travel, learning a foreign language, and even playing board games) may be related to lower risk for developing dementia. In this paper, Valenzuela and his colleagues look at how what he terms the “active cognitive lifestyle” affects brain function. The study shows that the cognitive lifestyle was associated with lower risk for cerebrovascular disease in men. It was also linked to change in the frontal lobes in both men and women that suggested the development of ways of compensating for age-related changes.

Reference:

Valenzuela, MJ et al. (2012) Multiple biological pathways link cognitive lifestyle to protection from dementia. Biological Psychiatry, 71, 783-791. Link to abstract is here; access to full text requires subscription.

Physical Activity and How Long You Live

admin — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 15:36:13 +0000

Lots of research has shown that, at least over short periods of time, people who are physically active are more alert, remember things better, and are in better health. But does that mean that they live longer? A recent review article looked at this question.

The authors found 13 papers that looked at the difference in life between physically active and inactive people. The paper is a little short on details about how “physically active” was defined. The paper review, for example, might have looked at elite athletes, but it’s not clear whether they maintained physical activity throughout life. Even with this problem, people described as physically active lived on average several years longer than those who weren’t.

One interesting finding was that leisure-time physical activity may be more important than having a job that demands physical activity — those who reported more leisure time physical activity also had slightly longer lives. The authors only found one paper that looked at strength training (those people had slightly longer lives) and none looked at possible confounding variables. For example, maybe people who are in general healthier are more likely to be physically active and live longer as well.

Reference:

Reimers CD, Knapp G, Reimers AK (2012). Does physical activity increase life expectancy? A review of the literature. Journal of Aging Research, article ID 243958. Open source. Available here.