dementia tagged posts

UCI professor of neurobiology & behavior Craig Stark, here holding a 3-D-printed model of his own hippocampus, says that “video games may be a nice, viable route” to maintaining cognitive health. Credit: Steve Zylius / UCI

Results suggest novel approaches to maintaining cognition as we age. Along with adding to the trove of research that shows these games can improve eye-hand coordination and reaction time, this finding shows the potential for novel virtual approaches to helping people who lose memory as they age or suffer from dementia.

METHOD: Before and after the 2wk period, the students took memory tests that engaged the brain’s hippocampus, associated with complex learning and memory. They were given a series of pictures of everyday objects to study...

Elders contribute to the fitness of younger individuals by caring for grandchildren and passing down important cultural knowledge. Credit: USDA

Many human gene variants have evolved specifically to protect older adults against neurodegenerative and cardiovascular diseases, thus preserving their contributions to society, report researchers. “We unexpectedly discovered that humans have evolved gene variants that can help protect the elderly from dementia,” said Prof Ajit Varki, MD. “Such genes likely evolved to preserve valuable and wise grandmothers and other elders, as well as to delay or prevent the emergence of dependent individuals who could divert resources and effort away from the care of the young.”

The standard model of natural selection predicts that once the age of reproduction en...

Preventive strategies, targeting diet, drugs, body chemistry, mental health, pre-existing disease, and lifestyle may help to stave off dementia. This could be particularly important, given that, as yet, there is no cure, they say. The researchers wanted to look at the factors associated with the development of Alzheimer’s disease in a bid to determine the degree to which these might be modified and so potentially reduce overall risk.

They trawled key research databases, looking for relevant studies published in English from 1968 up to July 2014. Out of almost 17,000 studies, 323, covering 93 different potential risk factors and more than 5000 people, were suitable for inclusion in the analysis...