Long-term Ecstasy Use 'Raises Risk of Brain Damage and Alzheimer's' | Society | The Guardian

by Denis Campbell, health correspondent - The Guardian

Long-term Ecstasy users risk brain damage, memory loss and an increased chance of developing Alzheimer's disease, new research suggests.

Dutch researchers used MRI scans to study the brains of 10 men in their mid-20s who had taken an average of 281 ecstasy tablets over the previous six and a half years, and seven peers who had taken other drugs.

They found that the hippocampus - the part of the brain controlling memory - was 10.5% smaller among the ecstasy users, and their overall grey matter 4.6% less.

"These data provide preliminary evidence that Ecstasy users may be prone to incurring hippocampal damage", and may help explain the memory loss witnessed among such people in previous studies, the co-authors wrote in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.

"Hippocampal atrophy is a hallmark for disease of progressive cognitive impairment in older patients, such as Alzheimer's disease", they added.

More

Calling All Beautiful Minds

The National Center for Creative Aging (NCCA) is an organization dedicated to fostering an understanding of the vital relationship between creative expression and the quality of life of older people. NCCA has partnered with Martek Biosciences, a company committed to brain health research, to help shine a light on people who are keeping their minds beautiful, and raise awareness of the actions people can take to maintain the most important organ in the body—the brain.

NCCA and Martek are seeking people 55 and over to be featured in a national photo essay exhibit showcasing women and men who are doing beautiful things with their minds without letting age be a barrier. The photo essay exhibit will travel to multiple cities as part of this educational campaign to inspire all Americans to follow suit in maintaining their brain health.

Beautiful Minds candidates who are selected will receive $500 to be given to the nonprofit charity of their choice and a prize package valued at $500.

Nominate by May 13, 2011.

Beautiful Minds Essay Criteria

If you are 55 or over, and have looked at aging as an opportunity to do something extraordinarily beautiful with your mind, you are a good candidate.

Do you or does someone you know:
·	Commit to a healthy lifestyle?
·	Maintain a healthy diet?
·	Engage in intellectual or brain-healthy activities on a daily basis?
·	Take measures to overcome a serious illness through mind, body, spirit and nutritional methods?
·	Receive accolades for work as an educator?
·	Participate in high-impact physical activities, such as running marathons?
·	Have a strong commitment to social well-being and volunteer to help others?

Click here for rules and regulations

Traumatic Injury Ups Risk of Early Death

More Evidence That Alzheimer's Disease May Be Inherited From Your Mother

Results from a new study contribute to growing evidence that if one of your parents has Alzheimer's disease, the chances of inheriting it from your mother are higher than from your father. The study is published in the March 1, 2011, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

"It is estimated that people who have first-degree relatives with Alzheimer's disease are four to 10 times more likely to develop the disease themselves compared to people with no family history," said study author Robyn Honea, DPhil, of the University of Kansas School of Medicine in Kansas City.

For the study, 53 dementia-free people age 60 and over were followed for two years. Eleven participants reported having a mother with Alzheimer's disease, 10 had a father with Alzheimer's disease and 32 had no history of the disease in their family. The groups were given brain scans and cognitive tests throughout the study.

The researchers found that people with a mother who had Alzheimer's disease had twice as much gray matter shrinkage as the groups who had a father or no parent with Alzheimer's disease. In addition, those who had a mother with Alzheimer's disease had about one and a half times more whole brain shrinkage per year compared to those who had a father with the disease. Shrinking of the brain, or brain atrophy, occurs in Alzheimer's disease.

"Using 3-D mapping methods, we were able to look at the different regions of the brain affected in people with maternal or paternal ties to Alzheimer's disease," said Honea. "In people with a maternal family history of the disease, we found differences in the break-down processes in specific areas of the brain that are also affected by Alzheimer's disease, leading to shrinkage. Understanding how the disease may be inherited could lead to better prevention and treatment strategies."

The study was supported by the National Institute on Aging and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

Story Source: The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by American Academy of Neurology.
More

Moderate Exercise May Improve Memory in Older Adults

Image via Wikipedia

A new study in older adults shows that brisk walking can increase the size of a brain region involved in memory formation. The finding suggests that moderate physical exercise can help protect the brain as we age.

The brain region called the hippocampus begins to shrink in older adults as part of the normal aging process. This can contribute to forgetfulness, memory loss and increased risk of dementia. Physical fitness is known to be associated with both increased hippocampus size and improved cognitive ability. However, it was unclear how exercise might affect people who’d already had some hippocampus deterioration as a result of aging.
More

Caring For Our Brains

As the average life span becomes longer, dementia becomes more common. Swedish scientist Laura Fratiglioni has shown that everyone can minimize his or her risk of being affected. Factors from blood pressure and weight to the degree of physical and mental activity can influence cognitive functioning as one gets older.

The lengthening of the average life span in the population has caused an increase in the prevalence of aging related disorders, one of which is cognitive impairment and dementia. An expert panel estimates that worldwide more than 24 million people are affected by dementia, most suffering from Alzheimer's disease. In the more developed countries, 70 percent of the persons with dementia are 75 years or older. Age is the greatest risk factor for developing dementia. But there is growing evidence that the strong association with increasing age can be, at least partially, explained by a life course cumulative exposure to different risk factors.

Laura Fratiglioni's research group at Karolinska Institutet is a leader in identifying the risk factors that lie behind developing dementia and using this knowledge to develop possible preventative strategies. The group's research has shown that the risk is partly determined by an individual genetic susceptibility, and that active involvement in mental, physical and social activities can delay the onset of dementia by preserving cognitive functions. Further education early in life has a protective effect, and the group's research has shown that it is never too late to get started.

"The brain, just as other parts of the body, requires stimulation and exercise in order to continue to function. Elderly people with an active life - mentally, physically and socially - run a lower risk of developing dementia, and it doesn't matter what the particular activities are", says Professor Laura Fratiglioni.

Laura Fratiglioni's research has shown that physical factors are also significant. Not only high and low blood pressure, but also diabetes and obesity when middle-aged increase the risk of developing dementia after the age of 70. "What is good for the heart is good for the brain", she says.

Knowledge about risk factors and how to protect the brain from dementia is based on observational studies in which scientists have discovered statistical correlations in the population. Scientists in other current studies that are carried out in Europe are investigating what happens when a large number of study participants are given special help to better control vascular risk factors and to stimulate social, physical and mental activities. which should, at least, lead to a delay of dementia onset.

"You could say that we are progressing from observation to experiment. This means that in a few years we will know more about which strategies are most effective in preventing neurodegenerative disorders", says Laura Fratiglioni.

Source:
Sabina Bossi
Karolinska Institutet

Sharpen Your Aging Brain in a Week — This Old Brain

Image via Wikipedia

from This Old Brain blog - Mindfulness and Integrative Body Mind Training

Mindfulness meditation has been around a couple of months longer than forever and is practiced by millions. It is the simple focus on the breath and noticing when we are thinking or, as Thich Nhat Hanh would tell us, lost in thought.

The other – newer – model is called integrative mind body training. See article on integrative body mind training for more details.

Here is the good news. Newer studies now seem to demonstrate a measurable positive effect from either of these within a week. Both studies were based on people doing the respective practice 3x a week for 20 minutes per session.

Full Article

Health Discovery: Lift Weights for Stronger Muscles, Stronger Brains - AARP Bulletin

by: Candy Sagon | from: AARP Bulletin

For older women, the type of exercise you do may be more important than how often you do it.

That's the message of a surprising new study by Canadian researchers that found that women who started a once-a-week strength-training program were more likely to stick with it — and reap the physical and mental benefits — than those who started a twice-a-week program.

More importantly, older women who built muscle strength through biceps curls, leg lifts, squats and the like showed much greater improvement in mental focus and ability to make decisions and resolve conflicts than women who did only balance and toning exercises.
Continue Reading

6 Cs : Healthy Aging Brain — This Old Brain

by Mike Kirkeberg

I was once going to start a website and call it ‘Braintenance‘ because of my interest in staying sharp with an aging brain. I couldn’t remember for sure why I didn’t. I now realize it was because the name was already taken. So this article will have to do for the moment. Here’s a primer on brain maintenance.

6 Cs for a Successful Aging Brain

You’ll notice that your brain is attached to your neck and then to your body. That’s important because neither the body or the brain exist in a vacuum. What happens to one happens to the other.

Conditioning.
I am writing from the US and I learned this morning that citizens of the United States lag behind a number of other countries in exercise. We walk about 5000 steps a day on average. Australia, Switzerland, and Japan are stepping much better than we. They eek up near 10,000 steps a day. Walking is an aerobic exercise so it streams oxygen throughout the bloodstream and aids in the production of new brain cells, the maintenance of old, and even lifts the mood. As we become fitter and more conditioned, so do our brains.

By the way, 10,000 steps is about 5 miles.

Connection.
One of the many ‘intelligences’ that has been written about over the past few years is social intelligence. We crave connection with others. Looking at this through the eyes of evolution, it makes a lot of sense. Over the millennia, survival itself often depended on the support of the group. The group, the community, the tribe helps us through troubled times. When we connect with other people, at the risk of seeming corny -

“You go from being a stranger to including this person in the self, so you suddenly have all of these social roles and identities you didn’t have before,” explains Dr. Aron, who co-authored the research. “When people fall in love that happens rapidly, and it’s very exhilarating.” The Happy Marriage is the Me Marriage

Connection means a lot. There is more to it than that, though, which brings us to the next C.

Conversation.
The article cited above also mentions the idea of learning through relationships. We get into them, it goes on, to expand ourselves, to grow, and to flourish. This happens through conversation. Conversations make more of ourselves, and in the interim, grow new brain connections.

Challenge.
Challenge takes on two meanings here. First, studies of people who lived to, and stayed mentally sharp until they were 100 tended to take the problems of life as challenges. They saw the glass as half full. The second, and I believe most important meaning I am giving challenge here may have more to do with brain health. I invite you to challenge yourself.

Contemplation.
Mindfulness, Integrative Body Mind Training, Tai Chi, or communing with nature (another form of meditation) all help to grow brain, help us slow things down a bit, and also help us be more response-able – we react less. Here’s the simple bonus of at least two of these – mindfulness and Integrative Body Mind Training – produce measurable effects within a week.

Choices.
Whatever becomes of our brains is based significantly on the choices we make. These choices may be around the food we eat, what we drink or smoke, and how many and much of the Cs listed above we choose to do.

Healthy brain gene linked to depression - Telegraph

By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent

Researchers hope that the discovery could lead to new treatments and early diagnosis of the condition that affects one in five people in Britain during their lifetime.

The team at Yale University have found that a gene called MKP-1 is twice as active in those that are depressed than those with good mental health.

When activated the gene appears to blocks pathways crucial to the survival and function of neurons in the brain.

Neurons are used to transfer and process information across the brain by a process of electrical and chemical signaling.

Professor Ronald Duman, the study leader, said it was "particularly exciting" because of the genes link with maintaining healthy brain function.

"This could be a primary cause, or at least a major contributing factor, to the signalling abnormalities that lead to depression," he said
Full Article

Age-Related Memory Deficits Reduced By Compound In Celery, Peppers

A diet rich in the plant compound luteolin reduces age-related inflammation in the brain and related memory deficits by directly inhibiting the release of inflammatory molecules in the brain, researchers report.

Luteolin (LOOT-ee-oh-lin) is found in many plants, including carrots, peppers, celery, olive oil, peppermint, rosemary and chamomile.

The new study, which examined the effects of dietary luteolin in a mouse model of aging, appears in the Journal of Nutrition.

The researchers focused on microglial cells, specialized immune cells that reside in the brain and spinal cord. Infections stimulate microglia to produce signaling molecules, called cytokines, which spur a cascade of chemical changes in the brain. Some of these signaling molecules, the inflammatory cytokines, induce "sickness behavior": the sleepiness, loss of appetite, memory deficits and depressive behaviors that often accompany illness.

Inflammation in the brain also appears to be a key contributor to age-related memory problems, said University of Illinois animal sciences professor Rodney Johnson, who led the new study. Johnson directs the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Illinois.

"We found previously that during normal aging, microglial cells become dysregulated and begin producing excessive levels of inflammatory cytokines," he said.

"We think this contributes to cognitive aging and is a predisposing factor for the development of neurodegenerative diseases."

Johnson has spent nearly a decade studying the anti-inflammatory properties of nutrients and various bioactive plant compounds, including luteolin. Previous studies - by Johnson's lab and others - have shown that luteolin has anti-inflammatory effects in the body. This is the first study to suggest, however, that luteolin improves cognitive health by acting directly on the microglial cells to reduce their production of inflammatory cytokines in the brain.

The researchers showed that microglial cells that were exposed to a bacterial toxin produced inflammatory cytokines that could kill neurons. When the microglia were exposed to luteolin before they encountered the toxin, however, the neurons lived.

The National Institutes of Health provided funding to support this research.

Source: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Full Article

Walking Correlates With Brain Volume, Cognitive Ability from MedPage Today

By John Gever, Senior Editor, MedPage Today

Seniors committed to walking had larger gray-matter volume and less cognitive impairment years later than those with more sedentary habits, researchers said.

Among 299 cognitively normal participants in the large Cardiovascular Health Study, those in the top quartile of distance walked each week at baseline had markedly higher gray-matter volumes when measured by MRI nine years later compared with participants in the lower three quartiles, according to Kirk Erickson, PhD, of the University of Pittsburgh, and colleagues.
Full Article

You Are What You Touch: How Tool Use Changes the Brain's Representations of the Body: Scientific American

Image via WikipediaBy Patrick Haggard and Matthew R. Longo

All our experience of the world, and ability to act on it, are channelled through our body. The pioneering computer scientist, Alan Turing, correctly realised the human mind is special not particularly because of its computing power, but because the body provides it with a unique interface to the world. Current research in psychology and neuroscience is probing how the brain represents the body. Recent advances have revealed that body representation is fundamentally multisensory, arising from the combination of many different sensory signals. These include classical “senses,” such as touch and vision, and also much more specific signals, such as the flexion or extension of each muscle, which define the body’s posture in space. This information is integrated to construct a multisensory representation of the current state of the body. Intriguingly, multisensory signals also affect what we perceive our body to be like, for example by making us feel like a rubber hand really is our hand! Our thoughts about what our body is are highly flexible, and track the multisensory inputs that the brain receives.

A common illustration of just how flexible the sense of our body is comes from changes in the brain’s representation of the body due to tool use. Humans, and some other animals, are able to use tools as additions to the body. When we use a long pole to retrieve an object we couldn’t otherwise reach, the pole becomes, in some sense, an extension of our body. Is this merely a poetic way of speaking, or does the brain actually incorporate the tool into its representation of the body? Studies of monkeys learning to use a rake to obtain distant objects show that this may be more than a mere metaphor. Multisensory brain cells respond both to touch on the hand or visual objects appearing near the hand. When the monkeys used the rake, these cells began to respond to objects appearing anywhere along the length of the tool, suggesting the brain represented the rake as actually being part of the hand.
Read Full Article

News Analysis - In Push to Detect Early Alzheimer’s Markers, Hopes for Prevention - NYTimes.com

Image via Wikipedia

by Gina Kolata

Will Alzheimer’s disease, a terrible degenerative brain disease with no treatments and no clear guidelines for diagnosis before its end stages, become like heart disease? That might mean early markers of risk, analogous to high cholesterol levels, that predict who is likely to get it. And it might mean drugs that actually prevent it.

That is the hope behind new diagnostic guidelines being proposed by the National Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer’s Association.

In July, when the groups first announced their proposed guidelines, they were met with some skepticism and anger. Why suggest ways of diagnosing the disease before a person even has symptoms? Why tell people they are doomed?

And are those early diagnosis guidelines just a sop to pharmaceutical companies so they can start marketing expensive, and perhaps not very effective, new drugs?

So the Alzheimer’s Association, with participation from the National Institute on Aging, held a conference call on Wednesday to clarify their position.
Continue Reading

Amyloid Treatments Reduce Tau Tangles from MedPage Today

By Kristina Fiore, Staff Writer, MedPage Today

Treatments that target amyloid plaques in Alzheimer's disease patients may also be useful for reducing tau tangles, according to two small studies presented here.

One study, a pooled analysis of two randomized trials in 46 Alzheimer's patients, found that bapineuzumab significantly reduced total and phospho-tau in cerebrospinal fluid compared with placebo after one year, according to Kaj Blennow, MD, PhD, of the University of Goteborg in Sweden, and colleagues.

In the other study, conducted among 38 people, the Alzheimer's vaccine known as AN1792 -- a trial of which was halted earlier in the decade due to brain swelling -- was associated with reduced tau deposits in the cerebral cortex and hippocampus, Delphine Boche, MD, of the University of Southampton in England, and colleagues reported.

Both groups presented their findings at the International Conference on Alzheimer's disease in Honolulu.
Continue Reading

The Vanishing Mind - Promise Seen for Detection of Alzheimer’s - NYTimes.com

By GINA KOLATA

Dr. Daniel Skovronsky sat at a small round table in his corner office, laptop open, waiting for an e-mail message. His right leg jiggled nervously.

A few minutes later, the message arrived — results that showed his tiny start-up company might have overcome one of the biggest obstacles in diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease. It had found a dye and a brain scan that, he said, can show the hallmark plaque building up in the brains of people with the disease.

Continue Reading

Related articles by Zemanta

• Radiochemicals, Chemists, & a Potential Alzheimer's Breakthrough (cenblog.org)
• New imaging technique shows promise in detection of Alzheimer's Disease (pharmastrategyblog.com)
• Novel radiotracer shines new light on the brains of Alzheimer's disease patients (physorg.com)

New Synthetic Magnesium Supplement Improves Memory And Staves Off Age-Related Memory Loss

from Medical News Today

Those who live in industrialized countries have easy access to healthy food and nutritional supplements, but magnesium deficiencies are still common. That's a problem because new research from Tel Aviv University suggests that magnesium, a key nutrient for the functioning of memory, may be even more critical than previously thought for the neurons of children and healthy brain cells in adults.
Continue Reading

Related articles by Zemanta

• Study: Magnesium Important for Memory (grantlawrence.blogspot.com)
• Improve Your Memory With Magnesium (eddieoneverything.com)
• Magnesium May Improve Memory (biosingularity.wordpress.com)

Mastering his mind | The Times Leader, Wilkes-Barre, PA

by KRISTA JAHNKE

Tickle the bottom of Matthew Sanford’s foot, and he won’t feel it.

He’s been paralyzed from the chest down since a car accident more than 30 years ago.

But squeeze his ankles — really squeeze them — and he’ll sense it. A subtle energy, a sort of hum, will rush from his bone and spark to life in his brain.

Help Sanford onto a yoga mat, and the 44-year-old who hasn’t walked since he was 13 will achieve poses that trouble even the strongest able-bodied practitioners.

Not that that’s the point.

His message is not about how he is able, despite being disabled. It’s about how we all can live more fully in our bodies with a stronger mind-body connection. And don’t you dare say he overcame anything, he says.

Continue Reading

Older Brains Make Good Use Of 'Useless' Information

Image via Wikipedia

from Medical News Today

A new study has found promising evidence that the older brain's weakened ability to filter out irrelevant information may actually give aging adults a memory advantage over their younger counterparts.

Continue Reading

Preparing For Successful Aging

It's never too early or too late to start working toward the goal of improving brain health.

So perhaps the New Year is the perfect time to consider how one achieves a long and satisfying life. A book recently publishing by American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc., called Successful Cognitive and Emotional Aging may be just the tool to help find some answers to the age-old question.

Its focus is on success in cognitive and emotional realms of aging a compelling topic in a society where baby boomers are poised to enter their golden years.
Continue Reading