Announcements: Live Q&A Today, $10,000 Memory Challenge, Etc.

Hi All,

This post is simply a few time-sensitive announcements. More juicy content (really fun stuff) coming in the next post.

LIVE AND FREE Q&A TODAY! – 2 HOURS LONG, ASK ME ANYTHING

I’m doing a live two-hour Q&A session today — please join me!

Just go to this Facebook page, click “Like”, and ask me whatever you like. Here are the details:

Date: Today, April 22, Monday
Time: 4:30-6:30 PM EST (1:30-3:30 PM PST)
Where: This Facebook page

$10,000 MEMORY CHALLENGE RESULTS

The biggest memory competition ever held now has a winner. Co-created by me and Grand Master of Memory Ed Cooke, then announced on this blog, it challenged “ordinary” people to learn to memorize a pack of cards in less than a minute.

Irina Zayats, a 24 year-old Ukrainian woman, showed just how quickly a brain can be trained. Miss Zayats had no previous experience using memory techniques, but she learned to perform the gold standard of memory skills (memorizing a shuffled deck of cards) in just five days. In doing so, she won $10,000 and, to her surprise, a job offer from Memrise, the learning platform that ran the competition.

How did she do it? Here’s the full blog post, and an incredible video of her performance is below:

Posted on April 21st, 2013

View the original article here

Irregular Heartbeat May Speed Memory Loss in Seniors

Study found that people with atrial fibrillation showed mental declines at earlier age than those without heart condition

By Steven Reinberg

HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, June 5 (HealthDay News) -- Older people who suffer from a type of irregular heartbeat called atrial fibrillation may also be more likely to experience mental declines sooner, a new study suggests.

"Problems with memory and thinking are common for people as they get older," said lead researcher Evan Thacker, a statistician in the department of epidemiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. "Our study shows that, on average, these problems may start earlier or get worse more quickly in people who have atrial fibrillation. This means that heart health is an important factor related to brain health."

As with other such studies, this one established only an association between atrial fibrillation and mental decline, not a direct cause-and-effect relationship.

That's why the next step is to find out why people with atrial fibrillation start to struggle with memory and thinking sooner, Thacker said.

There are at least two possibilities, he said. First, people with atrial fibrillation may have small blood clots form in the heart that then become lodged in the brain.

"These may be too small to cause noticeable strokes, but may over time cause small damage to the brain that would eventually lead to mental decline," Thacker said.

Second, people with atrial fibrillation may simply have less blood flowing to the brain, he said.

"This could result in the brain not getting as much oxygen and nourishment as it needs, which could lead to damage over time that would result in mental problems," Thacker said.

"Currently, we do not know whether either of these two possibilities actually occurs," he said. "We would like to study it using brain imaging technology to learn more about what is happening in the brains of people with atrial fibrillation."

Eventually, if doctors and researchers can discover why people with atrial fibrillation show accelerated mental decline, they might be able to learn how to prevent the problem, Thacker said.

The report was published online June 5 in the journal Neurology.

Dr. Gregg Fonarow, a professor of cardiology at the University of California, Los Angeles, said, "Atrial fibrillation is present in close to 3 million men and women in the United States and increases the risk of stroke fivefold compared to the general population."

In addition to the marked increase in the risk of stroke, more recent research suggests that atrial fibrillation is associated with an increased risk of mental decline and dementia, he said.

"Repetitive, small subclinical strokes in patients with atrial fibrillation may account for these findings," Fonarow said.

He said giving blood thinners to patients with atrial fibrillation is standard care to prevent clots in the heart from migrating to the brain.

Putting these patients on anticoagulants, such as warfarin or one of the newer therapies, will "likely be effective in not only reducing the risk of stroke, but also reducing the significant risk of mental decline and dementia," he said.

View the original article here

Brain Scans May Explain Thinking, Memory Problems in Some MS Patients

By Denise Mann

HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, March 6 (HealthDay News) -- Besides problems with gait and vision, people who have multiple sclerosis often complain they have trouble remembering things, and now new research may explain why.

According to a small study from the Netherlands, people with MS who report memory and thinking problems have more extensive damage to the white matter in their brains than their counterparts with MS who don't report such problems.

Up to 70 percent of all people with MS will experience a mental decline at some point, said study author Hanneke Hulst at the VU University Medical Center, in Amsterdam. And the new research "confirmed that cognitive symptoms in MS have a biological basis," Hulst said.

The findings were published online March 6 in Neurology.

MS is an autoimmune disease that occurs when the body attacks myelin, a fatty substance that insulates the nerve fibers of the central nervous system. The brain's white matter is surrounded by myelin. Symptoms range in severity and may include problems with gait, balance, vision, memory and thinking abilities.

To get a better picture of what was going on in the brains of people with MS, Hulst and colleagues used a new type of brain scan called diffusion tensor imaging along with traditional MRI scans on 20 people with MS-related thinking problems, 35 people with MS whose thinking ability was not affected by the disease and 30 people without MS.

More damage appeared in the brain's white matter of people with MS who reported memory and thinking impairments than in those who had MS but no such complaints about mental declines: 76 percent vs. 49 percent, respectively. This was especially apparent in areas of the brain charged with memory, attention and concentration, the researchers said.

"Imaging can now be used to capture a wider spectrum of changes in the brains of people with MS, and will therefore help determine more accurately whether new treatments are helping with all aspects of the disease, including cognitive [mental] impairment," Hulst said. "Unfortunately, at the moment there are no treatments available to prevent or cure cognitive problems in MS."

Dr. Steven Mandel, a neurologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, said the new study validates some of the complaints he hears from people with MS. "The test is not ready for prime time, but in the future, it can help us sort out how impaired these individuals are in regard to everyday life and daily living." It may also serve as a marker to assess whether a treatment is making a difference, he said.

Dr. Fred Lublin, director of the Corinne Goldsmith Dickinson Center for Multiple Sclerosis at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, said that memory and thinking problems are common in people with MS, but they are usually subtle.

"People with MS are more aware of [these problems] than are the people around them," Lublin said. Still, he added, "this is an important finding that helps us better understand how cognitive impairment occurs and therefore can be a marker for treatments in the future."

More information

Learn more about how MS affects memory and concentration at the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

View the original article here