About memory

A large meta-analysis has concluded that having diabetes increases the chance that a person with mild cognitive impairment will progress to dementia by 65%.

A review and a large study have recently added to the growing evidence that type 2 diabetes is not only a risk factor for Alzheimer's, but is also linked to poorer cognitive function and faster age-related cognitive decline.

Last year I reported on a finding that ten lipids in the blood could predict development of

A review of meditation research reported in January last year concluded that there were insufficient good studies to allow us to say that meditation clearly improves attention and cognition.

In 2013 I reported briefly on a pilot study showing that “super-agers” — those over 80 years old who have the brains and cognitive powers more typical of people decades younger — had an unusually large

In 2013 I reported how a 3-second interruption while doing a task doubled the rate of sequence errors, while a 4s one tripled it. A new study has attempted to measure just how much ongoing interruptions can negatively affect the quality of a complex creative task.

Three recent studies point to the impact of social media and multiple device use on learning and cognitive control.

Three recent studies point to the importance of cardiorespiratory fitness for older adults wanting to prevent cognitive decline.

Several recent studies add to the evidence that physical fitness boosts cognitive processing in children.

Following a previous study linking higher maternal levels of two common chemicals with slower mental and motor development in preschoolers, a new study has found that this effect continues into school age.

A French study involving 36 healthy older adults (60-80), prescreened for amyloid deposits in the brain to exclude people who might have preclinical Alzheimer’s disease, has found a linear increase in gray matter volume in proportion to the number of years of education (7-20 years).

Data from 57,669 older Taiwanese patients (65+) with no dementia at the beginning of the 5-year study has found that the risk of developing dementia was inversely related to statin dosage.

A comparison of Alzheimer’s prevalence across the world using 'age-standardized' data (which predict Alzheimer's rates if all countries had the same population birth rate, life expectancy and age structure) has found a strong correlation between national sanitation levels and Alzheimer's, with b

Analysis of post-mortem with and without dementia has found lipopolysaccharide, a component of an oral bacterium (Porphyromonas gingivalis), in four out of 10 Alzheimer’s disease brain samples, but not in any of the 10 brains of people who didn’t have Alzheimer’s.

Glucose levels linked to cognitive decline in those with

A new review from The Cochrane Library, based on six trials involving 289 people, has concluded that exercise can improve cognition and the ability of older people with dementia to carry out daily activities, such as walking short distances or getting up from a chair.

There are five healthy behaviors that appear to significantly reduce the risk of dementia,

A pilot study involving 17 older adults with mild cognitive impairment and 18 controls (aged 60-88; average age 78) has found that a 12-week exercise program significantly improved performance on a semantic memory task, and also significantly improved brain efficiency, for both groups.