For how we live.
In 108 people with Parkinson's, diffusion MRI found that damage to cholinergic pathways running from a deep-brain nucleus tracked worse cognition — and was most marked in those with dementia.
In a 12-month trial of 89 older adults with vascular cognitive impairment, strength training did not slow whole-brain white-matter lesions overall — but it did in women, and in two specific brain regions.
In 20 healthy young adults, closed-loop acoustic stimulation of slow waves boosted word recall, and the benefit tracked a shift in how sleep spindles nested within slow oscillations.
In LatAm-FINGERS, 1,065 at-risk older adults across 11 countries did better on cognitive tests with structured coaching than with flexible health advice over two years. The gap was small.
Ceperognastat, an oral OGA inhibitor, showed no benefit on the primary cognitive endpoint at 100 weeks. The higher dose progressed 32% faster than placebo and had more serious adverse events.
"Superfood" is a marketing word, not a scientific one. Blueberries carry real evidence for the heart and, tentatively, the ageing brain — but most of it is observational or short-term markers, not hard outcomes.
Retrospective studies keep finding bilinguals develop dementia symptoms three to four years later than monolinguals. Prospective studies that follow healthy people find no drop in who gets it at all.
"Brain fog" is a lay term for trouble concentrating and remembering, not a disease. Common drivers include poor sleep, low mood, the menopause transition, thyroid or B12 problems, and the tail of an infection.
Walking pads promise movement without leaving your desk. A trial found walking while working slowed typing but did not harm cognition; a second found hourly walking cut post-meal glucose and blood pressure.
US POINTER randomised 2,111 at-risk older adults to two lifestyle programmes. The structured version beat the self-guided one on cognition — but by a modest margin, and there was no do-nothing group to compare against.
In the CREST-2 trials, stenting or surgery added to intensive medical treatment left cognition no better at four years than medical treatment alone in people with severe asymptomatic carotid stenosis.
The idea that sleep flushes toxins from the brain rests largely on mouse experiments. A 2024 study using the same animal measured the opposite direction, and none of it has been shown in humans.
A protein named after a Greek fate slows ageing in mice and sharpens memory in old monkeys. In people the evidence is a gene variant you are born with, not a treatment.
Everyday lapses are a poor guide to trouble. The line that matters is whether memory loss is measurable beyond your age and whether it is starting to affect daily function.
Too little iodine, especially in pregnancy, is the world's leading preventable cause of impaired brain development. Salt iodisation fixed most of it — but mild deficiency has crept back in some rich countries.
Large randomised trials mostly find no cardiovascular benefit from ordinary fish-oil capsules. One high-dose prescription drug is the striking exception, and the case for brain protection is weak.
Forgetting a name is not dementia, and a third of people diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment revert to normal. But that diagnosis still carries weight: risk of dementia stays elevated even in those who bounce back.
A meta-analysis of consumer neurofeedback found no benefit for cognition, mindfulness or physical health and only a small effect on distress — even though the headbands do record real brain activity.
Resistance training in adults averaging 75 with vascular cognitive impairment, and aerobic exercise in adolescents. Both beat their control, and both controls were active rather than nothing.
Cataract surgery was tied to 29% lower dementia risk in a strong cohort. But the largest hearing-aid trial found no overall effect on cognition. The signal is real; the proof that fixing senses prevents dementia is not.
A secondary analysis of the ELITE hormone-therapy trial found hints that social ties tracked with cognition, but none survived correction for multiple testing.
The most popular cognitive-enhancer stack has one modest, well-tested combination at its heart. Beyond caffeine and L-theanine, the evidence in healthy people thins out fast.
A landmark trial cut delirium from 15.0% to 9.9% by addressing six ordinary risk factors together. Drugs, including antipsychotics, have not shown the same clear preventive benefit.
In 33 former players with autopsy-confirmed disease, memory, executive-function and language impairments were frequent before death, and greater tau burden tracked worse memory.
In nearly 12,000 US children, tree and park cover was linked to sharper directed attention and higher crystallized intelligence — and cleaner air seemed to explain part of it.
Two papers landed within a week: a global map showing 6PPD-quinone taking over from its parent compound along the way to water, and the first human study linking it to cognition.
Participants on Magtein scored better on memory and reaction-time tests after six weeks. On sleep — the reason most people buy it — an Oura Ring found no measurable difference at all.
A ten-person phase 1 study measured whether oral rapamycin reaches the central nervous system in early Alzheimer's. It did not — and several disease biomarkers rose over eight weeks.
Three successive birth cohorts over 22 years show falling prenatal pollution and rising test scores together. A separate review explains why the pathway from one to the other is still poorly mapped.
A review pooling prevalence across the region ties the projection to modifiable risks that are unusually common there — smoking, inactivity, diabetes — layered on rapid ageing.
Autopsy studies show educated brains carry the same disease but express it as dementia later. That is the concept's strength — and the reason it resists being turned into a to-do list.
ACHIEVE randomised 977 older adults and measured three-year cognitive change. The difference between hearing aids and health education was 0.002 SD units, p=0.96. One subgroup result is doing a lot of work.
Observational studies tie fitness to slower cognitive decline. When researchers randomise older adults to exercise, the cognitive payoff shrinks — in a Cochrane review of healthy people, to nothing.
The link between puzzles and a sharper old age is real in the data and largely the wrong way round: the earliest changes of dementia quietly reduce the very activities that later look protective.
In 390,124 US adults followed up to 27 years, daily multivitamin use showed no mortality benefit. Randomised trials within COSMOS found a real but modest effect on memory, and none on physical function.
A diet built to protect the brain looked powerful when researchers watched who chose to eat it. When they assigned it in a three-year trial, both groups improved by almost exactly the same amount.
A 1,224-person biomonitoring study found four compounds only in firefighter serum. A separate 65-person pilot in Texas asked whether that matters for cognition, and got a partial answer.
A consortium reduced overnight sleep studies to nine composites. Two tracked with better cognition. None tracked with whether a person later developed dementia.
A meta-analysis of 44 cohorts covering 1,864,274 people found the risk signal attached to naps of 30 minutes or more. Below that threshold, no significant risk appeared.
The best long-term trial found trained skills can last a decade. Whether they transfer to daily life, or hold off dementia, is where the evidence — and the FTC — parted ways with the marketing.
A standing commission estimates that eliminating 14 risk factors could prevent or delay 45% of dementia across a whole population. What that number means for one person is a different and much weaker claim.
Imaging finds smaller brain volumes from as little as one to two daily drinks. Long-run dementia studies show a U-shape, with abstainers also at higher risk — a pattern that is easy to misread.
In 3,873 middle-aged adults followed with repeated testing, waist-based categories of overweight and obesity showed larger effect sizes than BMI-based ones. The link to actual decline appeared only in men.
747 postmenopausal women were tested; 182 were scanned. Gray matter volume partially mediated the link between menopause age and cognition — in a cross-sectional design that cannot establish direction.
Pooling ten studies, researchers found menopause hormone therapy neither raised nor lowered dementia risk. The certainty of that evidence ranged from moderate to very low.
A small longitudinal study found reduced spindle activity over the temporal lobes in early Alzheimer's — and that lower temporal spindle density tracked with faster decline over up to seven years.
A 21-trial meta-analysis found effects concentrated in older age groups and largely absent elsewhere. A separate safety review of the most-used strain found no excess adverse events — and a big reporting gap.