Cognitive Labs

3 Related ideas: Your health, Your genes, and your brain speed. Brain Speed might be better termed "neural conduction velocity."

If your body was a PC or hi-def tuner, the assessment might be called 'bandwidth.' It is a measure of how quickly your brain can process symbolic functions. It is no coincidence that brain speed is correlated with IQ. The kind of exercise that measures 'brain speed' - known as ECTs or elementary cognitive tasks, were viewed initially as another, possibly superior version of IQ test.

For example, early IQ tests and even the Stanford-Binet test had the well-known cultural limitations apparent in such constructs as the Scholastic Achievement Test (SAT) which favored upper middle class students. Depending on proximity to this archteype, you were more likely to perform well. Take your SAT test, designed for suburban students in Princeton, New Jersey and another student on the other side of the world of similar age. The non-native speaker, even if from a nation with a strong educational legacy, could be impacted by unintentional bias. A translation of the test would not necessarily improve the outcome.

Now take an extremely simple measure without words or with a simple Yes/No option - such as how quickly you can push a button when a light comes on or a symbol flashes, and you have an instrument which can be used across cultures and even across species in some cases. The result is actionable information that can be used to correlate with human genetic types and variations, disease and health conditions, and create a personalized plan for optimization, which includes greater longevity and cognitive ability.

In other words, the process is now coming into place for us to step forward and make a major jump in evolution and perceptive ability, which is not necessarily the same thing as our ability to design and build devices or machines that 'simplify' our lives. Going back into human history, there was a time when humans were able to understand symbols as a form of communication and expression, despite having only elementary manipulative technology to alter their environment. To some extent, perception of symbolic meaning might be lessened or 'dampened' in direct proportion to our reliance on manipulative technologies (tools) that reduce our ability to visualize by filling our perceptive fields (sight, sound, olfactory, and more) with a distracting level of activity that serves no purpose other than justifying its own existence.

By improving human bandwidth or brainspeed with repetitive symbolic exercise we train ourselves to develop more flexible, effective, and enhanced cognitive abilities, a benchmark of health, longevity, and thinking into the future.

Labels: big brain academy, cognitive, fast thinking, symbol

WASHINGTON - More than 26 million people worldwide have Alzheimer's Disease, and a new forecast says the number will quadruple by 2050. At that rate, one in 85 people will have the brain-destroying disease in 40 years, researchers from Johns Hopkins University conclude. The new estimates, being presented Sunday at an Alzheimer's Association conference in Washington, are not very different from previous projections of the looming global dementia epidemic with the graying of the world's population.

But they serve as a sobering reminder of the toll to come if scientists cannot find better ways to battle Alzheimer's and protect aging brains.

"If we can make even modest advances in preventing Alzheimer's disease, or delay its progression, we could have a huge global public health impact," said Johns Hopkins public health specialist Ron Brookmeyer, who led the new study.

The biggest jump is projected for densely populated Asia, home of almost half of today's Alzheimer's cases, 12.6 million. By 2050, Asia will have 62.8 million of the world's 106 million Alzheimer's patients, the study projects.

A recent U.S. study estimated that this nation's Alzheimer's toll will reach 16 million by 2050, compared with more than 5 million today. The new estimate is significantly lower, suggesting only 3.1 million North American cases today and 8.8 million by 2050.

Among the estimates for other regions are:

_Africa, 1.3 million today and 6.3 million in 2050.

_Europe, 7.2 million and 16.5 million.

_Latin America and the Caribbean, 2 million and 10.8 million.

_Oceania, 200,00 and 800,000.

Labels: alzheimers

This Flash movie has 160,000 years of human development in just a few minutes. About 90,000 years ago there was a rapid and deep freezing which wiped out most of early humanity (a scenario which has been repeated occasionally).

The spread of genetic factors (such as APOEe4, which allowed some individuals to better weather famine) follows along with the migration routes.

Australia was populated long before most of Europe and the Americas.

Labels: apoee4, bradshaw foundation, evolution

Although it's true that sleep deprivation can lead to short-term memory loss, new research suggests it's not that our minds become too tired to absorb new material, but that the information doesn't get relayed past the eyes.

Experiments show that visual processing is impaired in the sleep-deprived, scientists reported last month.

Those short on sleep can only see and take in a small number of objects at a time. Anything over a certain threshold is lost.

When people are sleep-deprived, they may not be seeing what they think they should be seeing, and it appears that this is what contributes to memory declines following sleep deprivation, said Dr. Michael Chee - a neuroscientist at the National University of Singapore Graduate Medical School. He headed the team of researchers from his institution and Duke University.

The study involved 30 healthy volunteers whose memory was tested after a regular night's sleep and after going 24 hours with no sleep.

We generally think of memory decline as a result of faulty storage of information, Chee said. However, if the information is not properly handled by the visual system, either as a result of a failure to direct attention appropriately or a failure of visual areas (of the brain) to process what is seen, you can forget about the later stages of information consolidation and storage.

Chees findings were published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

He noted that a small group of sleep-deprived volunteers who had better performance in the tests were more able to tune out distractions, but even they suffered from compromised visual attention and processing.

In his next round of experiments, Chee wants to use brain imaging during tests to see if there are structural differences in the brains of people who are more or less susceptible to attention deficits from sleep deprivation.

Labels: Duke, memory loss, sleep deprivation