Do you know about - enhancing Brain Functioning For wholesome Aging - Interview With Scientist Jerri Edwards
Aarp Health Insurance! Again, for I know. Ready to share new things that are useful. You and your friends.Today we are fortunate to interview Dr. Jerri Edwards, an connect Professor at University of South Florida's School of Aging Studies and Co-Investigator of the influential Active study. Dr. Edwards was trained by Dr. Karlene K. Ball, and her research is aimed toward discovering how cognitive abilities can be maintained and even enhanced with advancing age.
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Alvaro Fernandez (Af): Please clarify to our readers your main research areas.
Jerri Edwards (Je): I am particularly curious in how cognitive interventions may help older adults to avoid or at least delay functional difficulties and thereby avow their independence longer. Much of my work has focused on the functional quality of driving along with assessing driving fitness among older adults and remediation of cognitive decline that results in driving difficulties.
Some research questions that interest me include, how can we avow healthier lives longer? How can training heighten cognitive abilities, both to heighten those abilities and also to slow-down, or delay, cognitive decline? The exact cognitive quality that I have studied the most is processing speed, which is one of the cognitive skills that decline early on as we age.
Af: Can you clarify what cognitive processing speed is, and why it is relevant to our daily lives?
Je: Processing speed is mental quickness. Just like a computer with a 486 processor can do a lot of the same things as a computer with a Pentium 4 processor, but it takes much longer, our minds tend to slow down with age as compared to when we were younger. We can do the same tasks, but it takes more time. Quick speed of processing is foremost for quick decision manufacture in our daily lives. When you are driving, if something unexpected happens, how speedily can you consideration the situation and resolve how to react?
Af: Please recap how the Active trial used the cognitive training program, and what the results were found to be when they were published in the Journal of the American healing association in December 2006?
Je: I was a co-investigator of the Active study, a multi-site, controlled study, with thousands of adults over sixty-five, to rate the effectiveness of three different cognitive training methods with three different groups:
- The first group used a memory training program along with a range of customary memory techniques such as mnemonics and the formula of loci.
- The second group was trained in learn inductive mental skills.
- The third group was exposed to computer-based programs to train processing speed.
All 3 groups spent the same whole of time in their respective training programs, nearby 2 hours a week for 5 weeks, going straight through exercises of addition difficulty. The Active study was designed to track participants' operation over a whole of years, so, after this initial 5-week intervention, some groups received training booster sessions, after 1 year and again after 3 years.
Willis and colleagues published the 5-year results in Jama last December and the results were very positive. All 3 types of cognitive programs were shown to have an follow immediately after the program, after 3 years, and after 5. But, the results of the group that used a computer-based program to train processing speed showed clear short-term and long-term results. Individuals who experienced improved speed of processing also showed good operation on tasks of instrumental activities of daily living such as speedily seeing an item on a crowded pantry shelf and reading medication bottles. They also reacted to road signs more quickly. We found this exchange of training in our prior studies using the training protocol as well.
In short, significant percentages of the participants improved their memory, mental and information-processing speed over all three methods. The most impressive follow was that, when tested five years later, the participants in the computer-based program had less of a decline in the skill they were trained in than did a operate group that received no cognitive training.
Af: The results of the Active study were quite impressive and contributed in large part to the whole of media coverage about brain fitness last year. However, as you have probably seen, there is a good deal of obscuring about brain fitness among the media and the social at large. Can you help our readers understand two coarse questions: 1) Why are new programs good than, say, doing crosswords puzzles?, and 2) Can one easily say that these programs can reverse age-related decline?
To write back the first question, I would say that a crossword puzzle is not a form of cognitive training. It can be stimulating, but it is not a form of structured mental practice that has been shown to heighten exact cognitive skills - other than the skill of doing crossword puzzles, of course.
In terms of the second question, it is too early to say either we can easily reverse decline in a permanent way. There are many skills complex and the studies are not long adequate to easily collate different trajectories. What we can say is that by doing some exercises, one can heighten cognitive speed of processing by 146-250%, and that a significant quantum of that improvement stays even after 5 years. We cannot say more definitively.
But I think it is excellent to be able to say that, in all of the programs tested, the payoff from cognitive training, or what we can call "mental exercise", seemed far greater than we are accustomed to getting from physical exercise. Just fantasize if you could say that 10 hours of workouts at the gym every day this month was adequate to help keep you fit five years from now.
Af: research like this seems to gift major opportunities for society. For example, wouldn't assurance companies, or the Aarp, want to sponsor more research and rate either to offer this type of training to their members? Won't major employers see opportunities to heighten the operation of older employees by identifying the cognitive skills that may need the most improvement and contribution tailored training? We could calculate that a man with faster processing abilities will also be able to make faster decisions and learn faster...
Je: That makes sense, based on what we know. Cognitive abilities evolve in different ways as we age, and some typically start to decline in our thirties. Cognitive interventions may help train and heighten those abilities, and there is already research that strongly indicates where and how training can be useful. More research is still required to deliver more spoton and tailored interventions in a range of environments. I calculate we will see the field grow significantly - and not just for aging-related priorities. Cognitive training may come to be useful for a range of condition conditions, such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's patients, for example. More research will help researchers refine assessments and training programs.
Copyright (c) 2008 SharpBrains
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