World’s Top Brain Experts Confirm Techniques for Enhancing Cognitive Performance

Once every 10 years a special conference is held to explore what we know about the cognitive neuroscience of our brain’s frontal lobes.  The conference is called The Frontal Lobes and was held last week. Progress over the last 10 years has been tremendous:

Drs. Stuss and Knight are world-renowned frontal lobes experts who produced the last global conference on the frontal lobes 10 years ago in Toronto. They say the last decade has been a gold mine of new knowledge and given rise to emerging fields such as social neuroscience, neuroeconomics, neuroscience and the law, neuromarketing, neurodevelopment and neurorehabilitation.

Of special interest to readers of the Next Brain Blog is the focus on techniques for improving cognitive performance.  A post on the conference blog, We can enhance cognitive performance in later years!, provides a nice review of techniques that have scientific support.  These include:

• Intensive cognitive training
• Playing video games
• Aerobic exercises
• Delaying retirement or staying mentally active after retirement

In addition,  cognitive decline with age is not as inevitable as once thought. Some studies showed variability among individuals and even some cases of spontaneous reversal

“Dr. Lars Nyberg (Umea University, Sweden), a former post doc at the Rotman Research Institute –  presented data from a large study that has followed the physical and cognitive health of over 4,000 adults aged 35 – 80 years during a two-decade period to see when brain failure starts to show. He found that the decline starts gradually around the mid 30s and then nose-dives around 60-65 years of age. But if there is a silver lining here, it is that all older adults are not alike in this trajectory. Studies have found variability of cognitive performance. In fact, there have been “rare” cases of spontaneous positive reversals of decline in this age group.”

These techniques and points of view have been covered elsewhere in this blog. The Frontal Lobes conference provides impressive scientific support for believing we now have the know-how, technologies and supplements for enhancing our cognitive performance and developing more resilient and longer-lasting brains.