AMERICANS may worry about heart disease, stroke and diabetes, but they downright dread Alzheimer’s disease, a recent survey found. For good reason. One in eight adults over 65 is affected by the disease.

Those who are spared know they may end up with the burden of caring for a parent or a spouse who is affected. Even though the number of older adults with dementias is rising rapidly, only a few drugs that have been approved to treat symptoms are on the market, and they slow down the disease but do not cure it. Researchers, however, are more optimistic than ever about the potential of the aging brain, because recent evidence has challenged long-held beliefs by demonstrating that the brain can grow new nerve cells and that Brain Training can be a big help. Read the informative New York Times article here…..

The scientific community continues to push ahead to identify the strong correlation between engaged in structured memory training and the ability to reason and to solve new problems independently (also referred to as Fluid Intelligence). The results of this important study were published on April 28th in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and are very noteworthy. An article in the New York Times describes the study, the results and the scientific conclusions.

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Game Description
Learn to recognize bird species by their song. You’ll need to discriminate between images of different species of birds and also between different types of songs. At times, these differences may be subtle, which makes this task especially challenging.

Cognitive Function Trained
This is a cross-modal task mainly involving the right tempo-parietal regions of the brain. The purpose of this game is to draw upon our working memories of visual and auditory characteristics of each bird, to practice visual-spatial scanning of the images on the screen, and to practice concentration for this type of material. In some cases, deductive reasoning is needed in order to choose the right match, eliminating the choices that have already been made and those that are most obviously wrong.

Benefit to Daily Life
In an increasingly noisy world, the ability to detect meaningful sounds in the midst of general background noise becomes very important. Our ability to distinguish such sounds can become less precise as we age. This game helps train the characteristics necessary to stay sharp in this area.

Are you unable to remember more than two phone numbers? Then you may be a “victim” of new technologies. Chances are, it is easier for you to store information on your hard disk, electronic organizer or mobile phone, rather than use your memory.

This finding is the result of a study on 3000 subjects by Dr. Ian Robertson, a Professor of Psychology from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

The study shows that the under-30 generation was less likely to memorize such pieces of information than over-50s who are less keen on new technologies and use their memory more. We have learned to “outsource” our memory by storing this kind of information on mobiles or computers rather than our own brain but “The less you use of your memory, the poorer it becomes.”, said Dr. Robertson.

So do your memory a favor and challenge yourself to remember important details rather than rely on electronic devices. Your brain will thank you in the long run!

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