Category: enriched environment

Alzheimer’s disease: omega-3 and exercise – the complexity of treatment

Fish and/or exercise to help Alzheimer’s disease? Alzheimer’s disease background: Alzheimer’s disease is the leading neurodegenerative dementia disorder. In most cases Alzheimer’s does not appear until after the age of 60, but there is an early onset form. It is estimated that 5.1 million Americans have Alzheimer’s. With about 36 million American’s in the 60+…

Weekend’s Better Brain Health Breakfast #7: Friends, Lovers, Puzzles, and Music

The power of love and friends for your health Staying married or good social connections can help you live longer are covered in this Washington post article. I have blogged on how social interactions can improve your health in a previous post. One interesting piece of data from the Washington post article is that social…

Can you teach an old dog new tricks – or at least juggling – and increase gray matter density in the brain ?

Image via Wikipedia You might, or might not, be an old dog – but we all want to be able keep on learning and ‘growing’. Yesterday, I wrote about a couple papers that demonstrated how learning to juggle increased gray matter density in a particular region of the brain (middle temporal area of the visual…

How playing the court jester can improve your brain

The court jester’s (harlequin) job was to entertain the court with his/her music and juggling abilities. The court members laughed at the jester (maybe not with him), but possibly the jester had the last laugh since his various entertaining endeavors possibly promoted in his brain greater plasticity and health. All this week I will discuss…

Exercise for healthy new neurons: even in middle age

Here is a follow-up to my Monday post on the quick rebound from an exercise layoff in the important brain health protein brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). A new paper published in the Journal of Applied Physiology examined running, BDNF, trkB, neurogenesis (new neurons), and neurite outgrowth (branching of the new neurons) in middle age rodents.…