I am excited to share some major brain health news with you. The signature injury of recent wars is Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). More than 413,000 U.S service members have had that diagnosis, with the most common type (about 80%) classified as mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI). The most common causes of mTBI are concussions and blast injuries. Most people have a full recovery, but a significant number (some estimate 15%) have persistent cognitive issues. In the BRAVE Study (funded by the US Department of Defense and conducted at five military and Veterans Administration medical centers), mTBI patients had cognitive challenges that, on average, had persisted for more than seven years. The study found that those who used BrainHQ experienced significant improvements in cognitive performance—equivalent, on average, to 24 percentile points. This is the first time any highly scalable intervention has been found effective in people with mTBI—the participants trained at home with weekly calls from a study monitor. It’s not just members of the military who have head injuries. In fact, the people most likely to go to an emergency room after a head injury are older adults. If you’d like to learn more, check out this article in the Military Times or this blog post written by our CEO, Dr. Henry Mahncke. |
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Best regards, Jeff Zimman Co-founder Posit Science |
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| | Just Keep Swimming It’s summertime here in the U.S., and for some people, that means a lot of time in the pool, the lake, or the ocean! Scientists and medical professionals generally believe that aerobic activity can have positive benefits for cognitive health—and that may be especially true of swimming. Recent research suggests that swimming can enhance learning and memory in both children and adults. Learn more. |
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When Two Brains Work Together There is some fascinating new research on how two brains interact—actually change—when collaborating with one another. In one set of work, scientists have found that when two people cooperate on a task (such as when a pilot and co-pilot land a plane together) their neural oscillations (electrical frequencies) align. Other researchers have found that when two birds sing a duet, the brain inhibits one from talking over the other. These types of studies have interesting implications for the understanding of consciousness. |
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The Brain Function of “Superagers” Generally speaking, as people get older their brains tend to get less healthy, and their cognitive abilities suffer as a result. This process typically starts when we are in our 20s or 30s, and often becomes noticeable by our 50s, 60s, and 70s. But what about “superagers”—those people whose memories and other cognitive abilities don’t decline over time? A new imaging study shows that their brain activity looks a lot more like that of a typical 25-year-old than that of a typical 85-year-old. Learn more (and don’t forget to train with BrainHQ for better cognitive function yourself!) |
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It’s Not Just “Mommy Brain”—Fatherhood Changes the Brain Many people have heard of “mommy brain”—the changes that take place in the brains of new mothers. But how does parenthood affect the father’s brain? It turns out that it may not be all that different: being a parent activates key neural networks in the dad’s brain, too. Learn more. |
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Brain Freeze Here’s another summertime subject: what causes “brain freeze” when you eat an ice cream on a hot summer’s day? Find out in this nine-minute conversation with neuroscientist Caroline Palavicino-Maggio. |
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News from BrainHQ This month, we launched BrainHQ in two new languages: Arabic and Dutch! That brings our total number of languages to 12. If you’d like to see what languages we offer or change your language, simply log in to BrainHQ, click your username in the top right corner, choose “Profile,” then scroll down to “Language Settings.” |
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A History of the Human Brain: From the Sea Sponge to CRISPR, How Our Brain Evolved (2021) By Bret Stetka In this sweeping new work, science writer Bret Stetka explores how we humans came to be, how our brains define us, and where we might be headed. We may have started out as sea sponges, but the evolutionary path of our brains took us in a unique direction. Well told, enjoyable, and fascinating, A History of the Human Brain is well worth a read. Learn more or buy online. |
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