Cognitive Labs

Awhile back we had a meeting with the people who represent Cal Coach Jeff Tedford, some of the number one draft choices he has produced, and a number of other famed athletes including a well-known former Stanford Quarterback - it was a brainstorming session.

The level of analytics that goes into coaching and talent management is amazing. Factors like speed of thinking are really important. This Yahoo! news story talks a little about what I learned that day

Astronaut Bondar: Younger people can get Alzheimer's
Note: This is true --physicians speculate that the actress Rita Hayworth may have contracted the disease in her 40's or even before.

CTV.ca News Staff

Not just old people get Alzheimer's disease, according to Dr. Roberta Bondar.

Canada's first woman in space, and the world's first neurologist astronaut, recently launched Alzheimer's Disease Mission for Memories: Taking action today for a better tomorrow, a project to raise awareness of the illness.

Bondar is taking the opportunity as a spokesperson for the Alzheimer Society to dispel some myths surrounding Alzheimer's.

"I felt there was a tendency in society to blame every old person as having Alzheimer's disease without understanding that it can affect younger people," Bondar told CTV's Canada AM.

go to article

George A. Custer and the Camp at the Little Bighorn River, front and center on our home page - if you notice, you'll see these 'memory'-centered images changing every few hours. If you want to see more, go to memoryTV which is now syndicated on cognitivelabs.com. Soon you will be able to add it to your site. There is an expanding collection of images, including a pastiche on the Civil War. You just start the channel and it will automatically go to the next selection of images, though there may be a slight delay between one set of images and the next. Try it here. Some of the consumer electronic companies are hitting this section of our site, e.g., Scientific Atlanta and Panasonic, for example. It's a beta so your feedback is valued anytime.

The best games for your mind, pretty much anywhere.

Check Memory TV for some more of your favorites...hint 1940's. We're getting to the natural images, albeit slowly. Remember to enable popups for memoryTV or usually you can just hold down CTRL while clicking on the 'launch memory TV' button.

here's a shortcut.

Scientists are dedicated - for example, spending your afterhours working on new memory tests or optimizing current tests or writing scientific articles after you have seen patients all day, many of whom hit the beaches of Omaha, though lamentably fewer today than in 1998 when Saving Private Ryan was released; or, they held Hamburger Hill, felt the Tet Offensive, or were part of Gulf War I or the current conflict. There are lots of memories there - I remember looking out towards Ford Island and the USS Arizona Memorial which was less than a half mile from our house. The scientist I am referring to is Dr. Ashford of course, who helps veterans on a daily basis; lately we have been working on the subtleties of action script and getting new tests optimized, often until the late hours. One of the tangible things you can do to help is leaving your brain to science

A while back we posted the story of Einstein's brain, fo example, as part of a longer post.

Many other people are doing the same, as societal focus switches towards early detection of dementia. This piece was especially moving, so here it is, though be warned it may not be for everyone in its discussion of the brain. If that might bother you, than don't read on

Probing a Mind for a Cure

By Stacey Burling
Ph. Inquirer Staff Writer

Bob Moore's brain lay on a white plastic cutting board.

There was something beautiful about its convoluted hills and valleys, the way rivers of dusky purple and red meandered through the beige flesh.
And mysterious. Here was the essence of a man who had gone to Yale, loved a woman, fathered six children, relished ice cream and Mozart and Kierkegaard and e.e. cummings, favored questions over answers and change over complacency, hated camping, loathed golf, and, over the last 20 years, had slowly lost the capacity to understand any of it.

He had died that morning in a Wilmington nursing home, years past being able to feed himself or walk or recognize the woman he had married 56 years before.
What had gone wrong with his brain?

Before neuropathologist Mark Forman lifted his knife last December in a basement autopsy suite at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, he could see that Bob Moore's brain wasn't normal. But it would be weeks before he could tell Moore's family what had made the man they loved disappear long before his heart stopped beating.

Robert B. Moore, a Presbyterian minister, was a spiritual man, but he was also a believer in science and medicine.

After being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1993, at age 67, he entered a clinical trial of an experimental drug. He let doctors, intent on finding ways to detect dementia earlier, tap his spinal fluid and compare it with healthy people's.
And he decided that his brain would be autopsied at Penn's Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research, founded and run by two nationally prominent dementia researchers.

Doctors can tell with about 90 percent accuracy whether a patient has Alzheimer's, the most common dementia. But looking through a microscope at brain tissue after death is still the only way to diagnose it with absolute certainty.
Perfecting diagnosis is critical in the emerging era of drugs designed for specific types of dementia.

But diagnosis is just the beginning. By studying brains from patients such as Bob Moore, scientists hope to figure out how and why the damage occurred - and learn to prevent it. More than one in five women and one in six men who reach age 65 will develop dementia before they die, a study this month reported. By 2050, more than 13 million Americans will have Alzheimer's, another study estimated.

>>read more from the article

Along with brain exercise and exercise, nutrition plays a vital role in brain effectiveness and Alzheimer's prevention. New research points to green tea as being especially beneficial.

more:
NEW YORK (CogLabs Newswire) - People who regularly drink green tea may have a lesser risk of mental decline as they grow older, researchers have found.

Their study, of more than 1,000 Japanese adults in their 70s and beyond, found that the more green tea men and women drank, the lower their odds of having cognitive impairment.

The findings build on evidence from lab experiments showing that certain compounds in green tea may protect brain cells from the damaging processes that mark conditions like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.

But while those studies were carried out in animals and test tubes, the new research appears to be the first to find a lower risk of mental decline among green-tea drinkers, according to the study authors.

They speculate that the possible protective effects of green tea may help explain Japan's lower rate of dementia, particularly Alzheimer's disease, compared with Europe and North America.

Dr. Shinichi Kuriyama and colleagues at Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine report the findings in the current issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition...

>Help build the global cognitive map>

What's this?: cognitivelabs.com is striving to reduce cognitive impairment globally while optimzing the brain at all ages - taking tests actually helps  everyone because globally valid norms are created so methods for earlier detection and prevention proliferate. Basically it's a better world for ourselves and for aging friends, colleagues, and relatives. Envision a better world along with us and then make it happen...

Cognitive Labs releases a new game! fly through the starfield, use your mouse.

Train before (or after) with the starship troop trainer because it can help improve your reaction time.

>subscribe in any currency - its less than 10 cents a day.

For several years, Cognitive Labs has pursued research into neurocognitive games that can drive measureable results under MRI, notably work completed at UC-Irvine.

Now, Nintendo is moving to commercialize similar breakthroughs derived from the work of Kawashima-san. (Other mentions of Dr. Kawashima's work in this blog: on aging | on cognitive gaming (Of course we have already launched our 1st and 2nd series of cognitive games) with more on the way, plus the game central portal and Gamer IQ. Get a membership

NEW YORK (Wall Street Journal) Nintendo's Brain-Training Game
Targets Older Players
By GINNY PARKER WOODS
February 23, 2006; Page B1

KYOTO, Japan -- Japan's hottest videogame is about to hit the U.S. --
and it doesn't involve shooting or racing. Rather, it's a bunch of word and
math problems with a distinctly no-thrills title: Brain Age: Train Your
Brain in Minutes a Day.

The idea came two years ago, when Nintendo Co. President Satoru Iwata
read a book by a Japanese neuroscientist that explained how to keep the mind
sharp with simple math problems. Mr. Iwata made a pilgrimage to the author's
office at a university in northern Japan and asked him to collaborate
on a videogame.

The scientist, Ryuta Kawashima, invited a team of Nintendo programmers
to his lab. For five months, they attached electrodes to the heads of test
subjects, who played with a prototype puzzle game. Then they used Dr.
Kawashima's brain-imaging technique to determine which drills
stimulated the mind the most.


read the whole article

Scientists assert that even with risk of mercury concentration, the benefits of eating fish outweigh the risks. The effects of omega3 on cognition have been written about extensively.

Yesterday we posted an errant URL for this game, blockbreaker - now you can try it.

If you visit our main page you'll see we've added a place for you to put your thoughts and favorite links - they'll be posted and preserved for you. It could be a hope, a wish, a dream, a memory or a favorite link that you want others to know about. Check back and see it posted. Memories themselves are a key part of staying vital. It's in beta so if you use it, it'll become a bigger part of the site.

We added two new games at gameCentral:

They are kickups and blockbreaker. Practice makes perfect.

Courtesy of reddit.com, we find that the first 'space tourism law conference' is scheduled to be held in march.

And you thought indoor rockclimbing had a challenging waiver, wait til we see what the barristers create for personal space travel (PST). The story. Think of the zero-G disclaimer

We worry about memory and attentiveness. But what about hand-eye coordination and our visual speed in tracking objects? The latter is really important for things like driving and also noticing objects and obstacles (when hunting for example).

Now you can track this as well: start

Building a Global Cognitive Map

Recently scientists presented a questionairre that will help you gauge, based on lifestyle, how long you might live.

For a quantitative measure, try this test, which will show you the speed of your thought to reaction... Maintaining your thinking speed is an indicator of longevity. As you age, and effectively deter some of the recent health challenges like heart disease and cancer, cognitive impairment becomes perhaps the greatest health challenge, requiring a healthcentric strategy to prevent it.

Living to 100? It might become the norm, according to scientists
ST LOUIS, United States (AFP) - Life expectancy may balloon to 100 years old in rich nations thanks to scientific advances, but such progress could widen the gap between wealthy and poor nations, according to researchers.


Within the next 10 years, state-of-the-art, anti-ageing technologies could -- if they come into widespread use -- radically start altering global demographics, extending people's lifespans by 20 years, according to Shripad Tuljapurkar, a Stanford University biologist.

Tuljapurkar, in a study presented here Friday to the annual meeting of the The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), said such technologies could see people in industrialized countries living to age 100.

Aubrey De Gray, a biologist at Cambridge University in England, backed up Tuljapurkar's research.

"There is a 50 percent chance of creating therapies within 20 years to give middle-aged people an extra 25 years of life," De Gray said.

However, Tuljapurkar, who is also a professor of population studies, warned such advances could trigger critical social and socio-economic problems, creating a larger gap between the world's rich and poor.

He also questions how the world and policymakers would cope with a "longer-lived" population.

"Some people believe we are on the brink of being able to extend human lifespan significantly, because we've got most of the technologies we need to do it," Tuljapurkar said. via Yahoo!

Dr.Andrew Weill - This interview by Revolution Health appeared in myDNA.com...
http://www.mydna.com/resources/news/news_20060220_andrew_weil_anti_aging.html

From LiveScience.com

ST. LOUIS—Human brains are bigger and better than any of our closest living or dead non-human relatives in relation to body weight. Scientists say we have fish and frogs to thank for this.

When early humans started to fish, they also began feeding their hungry brains.

The arrival of language and tool-making tend get all the credit for the big brain phenomenon. But before language or tools, a healthy diet was a brain's first fertilizer, said Stephen Cunnane, a metabolic physiologist at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec.

"Something had to start the process of brain expansion and I think it was early humans eating clams, frogs, bird eggs and fish from shoreline environments," Cunnane said.

Cunnane presented his research here Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Baby food

Three-quarters of a human infant's energy goes straight to the brain.

Given that babies are helpless, that sounds like a lot to spend on an organ that is cognitively useless and does little to ensure a child's survival, Cunnane said.


But human babies have extra energy to feed their brains. Unlike other primates, human newborns are born with baby fat. That lovable chub stores the energy needed to quench a baby's ravenous brain.


The fatter the baby, the healthier its brain, the thinking goes.


A diet that included fish and shellfish—and particularly frogs and eggs—would have provided ancient humans, and their fattening babies, with the best source of nutrients and minerals to foster brain development.

Still today

Even today, many people are dependent on shore-based foods. And it's possible, Cunnane speculates, that diets which aren't based on the ancient tradition put us at grave risk.

Deficiencies in iodine and iron—minerals rich in a fish diet—can lead to cognitive degeneration. That's why companies added iodine to salt starting in the 1920s.

"We're still vulnerable when we're not consuming that vitamin-rich diet," Cunnane told LiveScience. "I think we're seeing it today in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's. If you take away the fuel, the brain suffers."

So what would happen if we fatten up skinny chimp babies? A natural chimpanzee diet is low in brain food.

If scientists fed them fish, Cunnane said, their brains might grow. However, he added, "We'd never see the results. The experiment would take tens of thousands of years of evolution. But I think there would be a change in chimp brains."

Don't forget to get Memory For Life

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The response for a module allowing you to play asteroids on your favorite search portal was 90% "affirmative," thanks for participating. Also, join 1500 people who have taken this test since it was released. This test measures your raw brain speed, important for issues of attention, possible cognitive impairment, and reflex measurement. Fast responses are correlated with longevity and effective mental processes at any age.

There is a major focus on using MRI, including at UCSF, to identify early cases of Alzheimer's Disease.


WASHINGTON (CogLabs Newswire) -- Jim Walton saw the signs.

The repeated questions. The erratic driving. The disorientation.

Thelma Walton, his wife of more than 45 years, was developing Alzheimer's disease and he vividly remembers the day the nurse told them the bad news.

"We tested her, and the nurse came out and said, 'You're going to lose her.' Well, I decided I was not going to allow that to happen."

That was eight years ago. But now the Waltons can look back on 53 wedding anniversaries. Jim has kept his promise -- he has not lost his wife.

However, many Americans have lost loved ones or had their lives impacted by the disease. Researchers are attempting to learn more about the disease's mysterious origins -- which they hope will bring them closer to finding the elusive cure.

The search continues with a study sponsored by the National Institute of Health, starting this month at medical centers around the country, including Duke University.

Investigators are hoping that improved methods of brain scanning will allow them to detect the earliest indicators, or "markers," of the disease. Drugs could then be created to target these indicators in hopes of stopping Alzheimer's disease before it starts.

"We hope that brain scans can reveal markers, so drug companies can know whether a drug is working," said Duke's P. Murali Doraiswamy. "It'll also help physicians stage patients better." >>read more

Get a brain boost before bed...In the fictional Star Wars universe, clones are grown by the Kaminoans. Some clones have faster brains, based on their neurobic training and synaptic wiring.


Where would you fit in? Find Out (beta)
tag it: star wars  clones

Is it really on the horizon?...refer to this Physorg post tagged on shadows.

or take this quick + free memory test.

Researchers at Columbia University assert that mild cognitive impairment is hidden by education. This indicates a need for highly sensitive cognitive measures, unlike animal names, counting backwards, or the MMSE - all non-interactive, subjective, paper-based tests.

A study at Columbia University Medical Center suggests high IQ and more years of schooling may only camouflage the disease process. The educated brain seems to protect itself against symptoms early on, but once symptoms surface, scientists say there is a faster rate of decline.

"When symptoms finally do appear, their brains are already overwhelmed by the pathological disease process," said Dr. Nikolaos Scarmeas, assistant professor of neurology and lead author of the study published this month in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.

The scientists have been studying thousands of people older than 65 in Manhattan. The 312 men and women did not show signs of Alzheimer's when they entered the study, but a year and half later the first symptoms developed. The scientists have followed them for more than five years.
At the study's start, everyone completed neuropsychological tests, and the scientists spent an hour examining each patient. They also obtained medical records. Among participants, there was a range of ethnicities, and education varied from no formal schooling to 20 years of it.
"We think that these people can tolerate more changes and maintain their cognitive performance for a longer time," Scarmeas said of those with the most education.
"The extra reserve capacity of the smart brain makes a person look like they don't have a disease," said James Mortimer, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of South Florida in Tampa. "But the disease is a lot further along by the time the person is diagnosed."

The problem, he added, is that as scientists get better at treating the disease, "we need to find these people earlier. If they are hiding behind their education, we can't do that. We won't find them in time."

No one knows why education appears to soften the symptoms. It could be that smarter people do more mental exercise. It may be that they have a variety of cognitive strategies when solving problems.

For the evening, visit the global cognitive map. As you will see, we favor clean interface design - this with PhotoShop and of course, notepad.

here's the link

This comes from EurekaAlert, worth a read


How 'hot' emotional brain interferes with 'cool' processing


Florin Delcos (left) and Gregory McCarthy
Click here for a high resolution photograph.



For the first time, researchers have seen in action how the "hot" emotional centers of the brain can interfere with "cool" cognitive processes such as those involved in memory tasks. Their functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) images of human volunteers exposed to emotional distraction revealed a "see-saw" effect, in which activation of emotional centers damped activity in the "executive" centers responsible for such processing.

The findings of the Duke University Medical Center researchers provide insight into the basic brain mechanisms responsible for the distraction caused by emotional stimuli that are irrelevant to a task. Moreover, they said, the findings offer a new approach to understanding how people with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder cope with traumatic events and memories. It is known that people with such problems are far more affected by emotional distraction.

Development of new drugs to alleviate, for example, the haunting memories of PTSD sufferers will be aided by the fMRI technique the researchers developed to precisely measure this distraction, they said.

The researchers, Florin Dolcos and Gregory McCarthy, published their findings in the Feb. 15, 2006, issue of the Journal of Neuroscience. Their work was sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and the Veterans Administration. Dolcos is a postdoctoral fellow and McCarthy is director of the Duke-UNC Brain Imaging and Analysis Center (http://www.biac.duke.edu/), where the studies took place.
more>

If you read the previous post, you could see why there is a profound reason, even if you are not yet one of the 77 million boomers in the U.S. to take a test, to register and think about regular monitoring. By the way we have another dozen tests and an additional 200 games that we will be releasing...on a steady basis, first to paid subscribers.

RSS serves as a neuronic synapse, each data entry point (blogger)is an input. Can communal sentience be achieved? Imagine transcoded thoughts being transmitted with XML, rather than text files, with links to all the necessary objects. Just a thought. Measuring the speed and location of every node is important in creating a global map. That why it's important to eliminate cognitive impairment through early detection and proper neuro, genetic, and biochemical bug fixes or 'patches,' or maybe: 'cognitive service pack 33.4'

that's how many signed up for something on this site in the past 30 days - like to get to 14,800 per day. help us out by telling everybody - there will be incentives, too. http://cognitivelabs.com.

You can still vote.

Here's a typical response:

From: AdamLXYXYXY@aol.com Add to Address Book Add Mobile Alert
Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 09:34:03 EST
Subject: Re: Vote for Asteroids?
To: michael@cognitivelabs.com

YES

Thanks Adam

NEW YORK (COGLABS newswire) - Better metabolic control of type 2 diabetes can lead to improved "working memory" -- the type of memory people use to keep information in their minds for short-periods of time and to complete day-to-day activities... (read more)

thanks for voting in the informal poll

Vote!

Should Coglabs put a version of Asteroids on Google home page? Take out the tricorder and let us know...Today is kind of a space theme since I read Rich Karlgaard's post in Forbes

Bravo....also, check out some of our earlier postings in this area. We also have a stealth venture in this field....

Flush with dot-com cash--and raised on visions of moonwalks, space shuttles and Captain Kirk--a generation of passionate, tech-savvy entrepreneurs is breathing new life into the space business. Iconoclasts like Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos and Google co-founder Larry Page are dedicating not only their dollars but also their brainpower.

read more from forbes.com

One of the requirements for spaceflight will be a cognitive check-up, there we've got you covered. Just wait til you get a glimpse of cognitivelabs.com aps integrated with xyz....ours is platform independent and can be given here on earth, under the sea, or far away from earth while communicating to the terrestrial server.

Try the Beta Amyloid Blaster.

The link is here: http://www.cognitivelabs.com/betaamyloid_blaster.htm

Beta Amyloid is responsible for the growth of proteins i