More news suggesting music can help to sharpen the brain.

“Experience with music appears to help with many other things in life, potentially transferring to activities like reading or picking up nuances in tones of voices or hearing sounds in a noisy classroom better,” researcher Nina Kraus, a neuroscientist at Northwestern University”

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Another report on how exercise can help our brain.

“Tests on mice showed they grew new brain cells in a certain region of the brain that is known to be affected in the age related memory decline that begins around age 30 for most humans”.

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Here is a recent study that came out last week.

“Dr Mark Baxter, Wellcome Trust senior research fellow at Oxford University, said: “This study is exciting because it reveals a group of brain cells in the adult human brain that are continuously regenerating”

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Here is a recent study out of Princeton University that tries to link sleep and brain cells.

“Losing sleep may cause the brain to stop producing new brain cells, a study conducted by New Jersey’s Princeton University has found”

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Researchers at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago have assessed loneliness and dementia. 

“In human beings, loneliness has been associated with impaired social skills. Thus, neural systems underlying social behavior might be less elaborated in lonely persons and, as a result, be less able to compensate for other neural systems compromised by age-related neuropathy,”

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Another study showing the impact of learning on our brains.

“These remarkable findings suggest stimulating the mind with activities such as reading books or completing crossword puzzles may help delay and/or prevent Alzheimer’s disease in senior citizens.”

The full piece can be read here

Here is another study on the benefits of studying another language.

“If you have two languages in your brain, you need a way to keep them straight, otherwise you might say the wrong thing,” she said. It’s one of the things that often goes wrong with people suffering from dementia. They can no longer control their speech.The frontal lobes, which control planning and other high-level functions, are also used in language. Research has found exercising that part of the brain can help build up a “cognitive reserve,” which can stave off dementia.”

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Here is some more progress in the ability to detect Alzheimer’s earlier on.

“We urgently need techniques to see brain changes in the earliest stages of cognitive decline so that we can identify people at risk…”

The full article can be read here

A good article over at US News and World Report on how cognitive decline is impacting people under 65.

“Several hundred thousand people–perhaps as many as 640,000–under the age of 65 who have dementia, the vicious thief of minds that steals memories, personality, relationships, language, and ultimately the ability to function as a human being”.

You can read the full article here

Here is an interesting post over at iHealthBulletin.

Everybody knows that exercise is good for your heart, but in recent years we’ve gathered compelling evidence that exercise is also good for your brain,” says Fred Gage, PhD, of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. “We now know that exercise helps generate new brain cells, even in the aging brain.”

 Read more here