>>A Blog About the Science and Technology of Living Forever

A recent study at the University of Western in Ontario, Canada is suggested a second look at coma patients in a vegetative state may be required before “pulling the plug”. Following an experiment with MRI technology, Professor Adrian Owen and Postdoctoral Fellow Lorina Naci have determined that a man in a coma – the result of a serious car accident – is aware of his surroundings and his identity. This breakthrough finding challenges many of the assumptions about “vegetative” patients, and gives hope to their families. Dr. Owen, a Canada Research Chair, is behind the groundbreaking studies that examine patients under the medical sentence “vegetative state”. He suggests that these patients are simply incapable of “generating” — which simply means they don’t have the ability to communicate.  However, he says these patients still have the intention to communicate, making them a conscious human being with functioning capacities. MRI images prove Dr. Owens hypothesis to be true.  Using a comparison chart of a healthy human brain and that of a vegetative patient he provides a visual aid that shows the specific areas of the brain that signal a “yes” or “no” answer to a set of questions.  The questions used have specific answers routed in the patient’s reality to test if the brain is of sound mind. Dr.Owen is not the only doctor leading the research in neuroscience. Jill Bolte Taylor originally entered the field of brain science as a result of her schizophrenic brother.  She became a highly acclaimed scientist at Harvard University. On Dec. 10, 1996 a blood vessel exploded in the left half of her brain. From that day forward Jill could no longer walk, talk becoming an infant in a woman’s body. In her book, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s...

Researchers may have a new tool in the fight to cure neurological diseases after they discovered the role of an important brain protein which helps store learning as long-term memories. In a study published in Nature Neuroscience, they said further research into the Arc protein‘s role could help in finding new ways to fight neurological diseases. The protein might also be connected to autism. Research has also revealed the protein is lacking in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. Scientists recently discovered that Arc is depleted in the hippocampus, the brain’s memory center, for patients suffering from Alzheimer’s. Read more at...

An epidemiological study of more than 400,000 aging Americans showed that men who consume 2-3 cups of coffee each day had a 10% lower death rate than their non-coffee drinking brethren. Women that drank the same amount had a higher longevity rate: They were 13% less likely to die. While it isn’t clear why the peppy black beverage extends longevity, the correlation is worth noting. Other research also shows that consumption of about three to four cups each day is linked to a reduction in a variety of diseases including type 2 diabetes, basal cell carcinoma skin cancer, prostate cancer, oral cancer and the recurrence of breast cancer. Animal studies show that caffeine — the active substance in coffee that perks you up – might impact brain chemistry to delay the onset of dementia. In 2012, scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign discovered when lab mice are briefly starved of oxygen, they lose the ability to form memories. Half of the mice then received caffeine equivalent to a few cups of coffee. Those lucky mice bounced back 33% faster those mice that did not get caffeine. It turns out caffeine disrupts the ill effects of adenosine, the substance in cells that usually provides energy but is damaging when cells are distressed. Adenosine might cause a biochemical reaction that leads to inflammation, and impairs brain cells. It might possibly contribute to brain damage including the process that results in dementia. So we say: Drink your coffee! And live...

If you’re not willing to send electrical shocks through your brain – “mild” as they might be – to become smarter, here’s a much gentler option: play sounds while you sleep. Researchers have found that “carefully timed” sounds, like the rise and fall of waves washing against the shore, can help people remember things that they learned the previous day. I predict sales of white noise machines to increase in the near future. In the human brain a network of neurons are often activated together. The collective rise and fall of activity of the network produces oscillations, the lines we see in an EEG. At different times the brain oscillates at different frequencies. During sleep the brain produces slow, <1 Hz oscillations – hence the term “slow-wave sleep” – and these oscillations are thought to be important for consolidating memories. The idea that the scientists at the University of Tübingen in Germany wanted to test was whether or not auditory stimulation that boosted the slow-wave oscillations also boosted memory. The study included 11 people who learned word associations right before they went to bed. Their word association memory was tested before they went to sleep and then again the following day. While they slept, they were played short durations of pink noise, a hissing sound similar to white noise. Importantly, the pink noise sounds were timed to the sleeping person’s “slow-wave” brain oscillations. When the individuals received the pink noise stimulation they were able to remember twice as many word associations than without the stimulation. When they repeated the experiment with pink noise that was not synchronized to the slow-waves, they saw no improvement in memory. Monitoring the brain waves with EEG, the researchers also saw that the sound stimuli actually boosted the ongoing slow-wave oscillations. This led the researchers...

A 2012 study suggests that cognitive aging could be delayed by up to 2.5 years in elderly people who consume greater amounts of the flavonoid-rich berries.

by Cheryl Poirer I was having lunch with a friend the other day and as we were going our separate ways we loosely started organizing a party. We spoke about where it should be held and I said “Yes! We’ll have it as his place because he’s got that great balcony and he has a…” I was thinking “ barbecue” but I couldn’t find the word. I started gesturing with my hands saying, “You know a..a..,” what came out was this: “One of those box things with fire in it. You know, for cooking stuff.” “You mean a barbecue?” We started laughing. Memory loss is common and can begin as early as our 20s. We start to lose our noggin, so to speak. Meaning our bodies are losing brain cells faster than we replace them. New York-Presbyterian outlines signs, symptoms of memory loss and what to do about them. One thing we can do is eat right. Antioxidants found in certain foods have been proven to fight memory loss, as well as some foods have been known to increase memory retention!  Read more about this here. With both of these resources in hand I’m off to the grocery store to buy things to fill my cooling box, play mind challenging amusing matches and call my friend on my small, communication device and ask if we can have a party at that large, container where he sleeps that has a great balcony and...

One dose of the hallucinogenic drug LSD could help alcoholics give up drinking, according to an analysis of studies performed in the 1960s. A study, presented in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, looked at data from six trials and more than 500 patients. It said there was a “significant beneficial effect” on alcohol abuse, which lasted several months after the drug was taken. An expert said this was “as good as anything we’ve got”. LSD is a class A drug in the UK and is one of the most powerful hallucinogens ever identified. It appears to work by blocking a chemical in the brain, serotonin, which controls functions including perception, behaviour, hunger and mood. Benefit Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology analysed earlier studies on the drug between 1966 and 1970. Patients were all taking part in alcohol treatment programmes, but some were given a single dose of LSD of between 210 and 800 micrograms. For the group of patients taking LSD, 59% showed reduced levels of alcohol misuse compared with 38% in the other group. This effect was maintained six months after taking the hallucinogen, but it disappeared after a year. Those taking LSD also reported higher levels of abstinence. The report’s authors, Teri Krebs and Pal-Orjan Johansen, said: “A single dose of LSD has a significant beneficial effect on alcohol misuse.” They suggested that more regular doses might lead to a sustained benefit. “Given the evidence for a beneficial effect of LSD on alcoholism, it is puzzling why this treatment approach has been largely overlooked,” they added. Prof David Nutt, who was sacked as the UK government’s drugs adviser, has previously called for the laws around illegal drugs to be relaxed to enable more research. He said: “Curing alcohol dependency requires...

The poorer your sleep, the more likely you may be to develop Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new study. “We found that if people had a lot of awakenings during the night, more than five awakenings in an hour, they are more likely to have preclinical Alzheimer’s disease,” says researcher Yo-El Ju, MD, assistant professor of neurology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Preclinical Alzheimer’s disease is the term given to people who have normal mental skills but show brain changes associated with the degenerative disorder. Ju is due to present her findings on sleep problems and Alzheimer’s disease in April at the American Academy of Neurology’s annual meeting in New Orleans.  to read this article in its entirety on WebMed, click...

A link between memory loss and a high calorie diet has been suggested by researchers in the US. They were investigating mild cognitive impairment (MCI), which can be an early sign of dementia. Research, presented at a conference, claimed a high calorie diet was linked to having twice the risk of MCI, compared with a low calorie diet. Alzheimer’s Research UK said a healthy lifestyle was known to help protect against dementia. Mild cognitive impairment has become increasingly interesting to researchers as it may help predict who will go on to develop dementia, such as Alzheimer’s. A team at the Mayo Clinic in the US has investigated the effect of diet in 1,233 people aged between 70 and 89. None had dementia, but 163 were diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment. Doubling The patients were divided into low calorie intake (600 to 1,526 calories a day), middle (1,526 to 2,142.5) and high (2,142.5 to 6,000) and the incidence of mild cognitive impairment was compared. The results were presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology. They showed no difference in the low and middle groups, however, the high intake group had more than double the incidence of MCI. Researcher Dr Yonas Geda said: “We observed a dose-response pattern which simply means; the higher the amount of calories consumed each day, the higher the risk of MCI.” The study cannot say that a high calorie diet causes MCI, people who are cognitively impaired could end up eating more food or there could be another factor involved which increases the risk of both. It has also not yet been published in a peer-reviewed academic journal. But Dr Geda did suggest there was potential for therapy: “Cutting calories and eating foods that make up a...

Destructive plaques found in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients have been rapidly cleared by researchers testing a cancer drug on mice. The US study, published in the journal Science, reported the plaques were broken down at “unprecedented” speed. Tests also showed an improvement in some brain function. Specialists said the results were promising, but warned that successful drugs in mice often failed to work in people. The exact cause of Alzheimer’s remains unknown, but one of the leading theories involves the formation of clumps of a protein called beta-amyloid. These damage and kill brain cells, eventually resulting in memory problems and the inability to think clearly. Clearing protein plaques is a major focus of Alzheimer’s research and drugs are already being tested in human clinical trials. Read the rest of this BBC News item...

Men who smoke tend to have a more rapid mental decline than men who do not smoke, a new study shows. But the findings did not reveal a similar link between smoking and mental decline in female smokers. Although the exact reason for the sex difference is unclear, one possibility is that women tend to smoke fewer cigarettes a day than men do and for fewer years. Other lifestyle habits, such as male smokers drinking more alcohol, may also account for some differences seen. In the study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, scientists analyzed data from nearly 6,000 men and more than 2,100 women who were British civil servants. To evaluate their thinking abilities, participants were given their first mental assessment at midlife, an average age of 56. The assessment included five tests of memory, vocabulary, and reasoning (verbal and math) skills. Participants were retested two more times (every five years) over a decade. To determine volunteers’ smoking habits over a 25-year period, researchers looked at their then-current smoking status and past history, including whether they had quit or relapsed. Faster mental decline was seen in middle-age men who currently smoked than men who never...

The benefits of exercise are attributed to several mechanisms, many which highlight its neuroprotective role via actions that enhance neurogenesis, neuronal morphology and/or neurotrophin release. However, the brain is also composed of glial and vascular elements, and comparatively less is known regarding the effects of exercise on these components in the aging brain. Here, we show that aerobic exercise at mid-age [also] counters several well-established glial markers of brain aging. Similarly, we show that age-related changes in neurovascular morphology and function were reduced with exercise. Thus, our results show that exercise can potentially mitigate progressive age-related changes in several key non-neuronal elements of the brain. Further, we show that these brain processes are still highly responsive to exercise in the midlife age range, consistent with studies showing that cognitive function can benefit from exercise even if initiated at later ages. Continue reading...

Yesterday, a coworker showed me an interesting internet phenomenon that I’d seen some years before but had completely forgotten. You may recognize it from when it began circulating via email in 2003 (you know, those chain emails that threatened horrible things if you didn’t forward them): Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. I, like most people who read this, found it incredibly interesting, and decided to investigate further. It turns out that, although this passage holds a few grains of truth, there are a few substantial errors. The first issue with the passage is that, according to an actual language researcher at Cambridge University, while there are several groups at the school studying language, this particular topic was not being investigated at the time of the passage’s release. The second problem is its claim that the middle letters can be in any order without affecting reading comprehension—this is only partially true. Take, for example, the following sentences: 1. Big ccunoil tax ineesacrs tihs yaer hvae seezueqd the inmcoes of mnay pneosenirs 2. A dootcr has aimttded the magltheuansr of a tageene ceacnr pintaet who deid aetfr a hatospil durg blender  Click here to the read the rest of this article (from the Dana Foundation...

As the pres­i­dent and med­ical direc­tor of the Alzheimer’s Research and Pre­ven­tion Foun­da­tion (ARPF), it’s my job to stay on top of advances in the field of Alzheimer’s research. Recently, a num­ber of arti­cles in the med­ical lit­er­a­ture have caught my atten­tion. They are focused on a par­tic­u­lar ques­tion that con­cerns most Baby Boomers like me: “Is mem­ory loss just a nor­mal part of aging?” Many of my patients in their fifties, six­ties, and older notice that they occa­sion­ally for­get things like a name, face, or where they put their keys. They won­der whether this behav­ior is nor­mal, or if it is a sign of Alzheimer’s dis­ease. It’s a rea­son­able worry: Alzheimer’s dis­ease is reach­ing epi­demic pro­por­tions and recent sur­veys by the Alzheimer’s Asso­ci­a­tion and oth­ers reveal that it is the Baby Boomers’ biggest health fear. answer to that ques­tion used to be, “Yes, we all expe­ri­ence some mem­ory loss as we age. Don’t worry—it’s not Alzheimer’s.” Indeed, it was once thought that a lit­tle mem­ory loss was an expected and accepted part of the nor­mal aging process. There was even a term for it: Age-Associated Mem­ory Impair­ment (AAMI). It included a gen­eral slow­ing of men­tal func­tions such as pro­cess­ing, stor­ing, and recall­ing new infor­ma­tion. It also included a gen­eral decline in the abil­ity to per­form tasks related to cog­ni­tive func­tion such as mem­ory, con­cen­tra­tion, and focus. But here’s the rub: AAMI was never a clin­i­cal diag­no­sis, even though many physi­cians, lay people—and, yes, even yours truly—thought oth­er­wise. Instead, AAMI is a tech­ni­cal diag­no­sis. It’s made by a psy­cho­me­t­ric test, not by actual clin­i­cal symptoms. Click here to read the full article in...

By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO | Fri Jan 20, 2012 8:39am EST (Reuters) – The U.S. government has set a deadline of 2025 for finding an effective way to treat or prevent Alzheimer’s disease, an ambitious target considering there is no cure on the horizon and one that sets a firm deadline unlike previous campaigns against cancer or AIDS. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF7iD0B8jWU A panel of Alzheimer’s experts this week has been fleshing out the first comprehensive plan by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to fight Alzheimer’s disease, an effort mandated by the National Alzheimer’s Project Act signed into law by President Barack Obama last year. The law called for the government to create a blueprint to beat Alzheimer’s but provided no new money for the effort. More than 5 million Americans suffer from Alzheimer’s, a brain disease that causes dementia and affects primarily elderly people. Some experts estimate the disease costs the United States more than $170 billion annually to treat. click here to read the rest of this article.  ...

Virtual reality exercise games, like the Wii Fit, may help older adults fight cognitive decline, researchers found. Older adults who played a racing game by pedaling a stationary bike saw a significant boost in overall executive function on cognitive testing compared with stationary bike use alone (P=0.002), in a clinical trial by Cay Anderson-Hanley, PhD, of Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., and colleagues. “Cybercycling” for three months in the trial reduced risk of clinical progression to mild cognitive impairment by a relative 23%, the group reported in the February issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. “Our findings give us hope that there can be an impact on improved brain health for older adults by this kind of synergistic mental and physical exercise,” Anderson-Hanley told MedPage Today. “The other thing is it’s a lot of fun.” Participants in the trial often said they enjoyed exercise when playing the virtual reality game, she noted in an interview, which she suggested could help seniors start up and stick to a regimen. Click here to read complete article and to see a video interview with Cay...

There have been many studies showing the correlation between a healthy brain and high levels of omega-3 fatty acids. Your grandma probably told you, “eat your fish, it is good for your brain.” A new study published in the December 28 issue of Neurology is unique, however, because researchers measure nutrient biomarkers in the blood….testing for omega-3 and other vitamin levels including B, C, D and E. Previous studies have used data from diet questionnaires. The paper’s first author is Dr Gene Bowman from the Departments of Neurology and Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, and a member of the American Academy of Neurology. He and his colleagues describe three sets of findings: Elderly people with diets high in several vitamins or omega 3 fatty acids were less likely to have the brain shrinkage that usually accompanies Alzheimer’s disease than people whose diets were low in those nutrients. Those whose diets were high in omega 3 fatty acids and in vitamins C, D, E and the B vitamins were also more likely to score better on tests of mental ability than those whose diets were low in those nutrients. Those whose diets were high in trans fats were more likely to have brain shrinkage and perform less well on thinking and memory tests than those whose diets were low in trans fats. For the study, Bowman and colleagues recruited 104 elderly people of average age 87 who had few risk factors for impaired memory and thinking. From participants’ blood tests the researchers measured 30 different nutrient biomarkers. All the participants also completed tests of memory and thinking, while 42 of them also underwent MRI scans that measured their brain volume. The results showed that overall the participants’...

Getting enough choline, a nutrient related to the B vitamins, may be important to keeping your brain sharp as you age. Researchers at Tufts and other Boston-area universities analyzed data on nearly 1,400 participants, ages 36 to 83, in the long-running Framingham study. Participants completed dietary questionnaires and then took memory and cognitive tests and underwent MRI scans. Those with high dietary choline intake did better on the tests and were less likely to show areas of “white-matter hypersensitivity” in the brain, possible signs of blood-vessel damage linked to dementia. Scientists cautioned that the testing differences were small – not enough to notice in day-to-day activities – and that the results don’t prove that choline protects the brain. But people with lower choline intake were more likely to be on a “pathway” toward cognitive decline than those with more dietary choline. Food sources of choline include egg yolks, chicken, milk, fish, peanut butter, potatoes, cauliflower, tomatoes, banana, oranges, some legumes, whole grains, sesame and flax seeds, along with the food additive lecithin. – American Journal of Clinical...