The Journal of Neuroscience

• Talking to your baby or toddler shapes the structure of their brain, my colleagues and I have discovered.
• The children wore a small audio recorder in a specially made vest for between one and three days.
• We recorded all the language input they received – such as adults talking to the child, adults talking to each other and siblings talking.

Brain development

• We were particularly interested in the amount of myelin in brain areas associated with language processing.
• The question was whether children who heard more language would have more myelin in language-processing brain regions.
• During the first year of life, the brain is busy growing new cells, so hearing lots of language may ramp up brain growth.
• This suggests that talking matters just as much at six months as at 30 months, but it affects the brain differently because the brain is in a different “state”.

Good ways to talk to babies and toddlers

• Of course, there are different ways babies and toddlers can be exposed to talk – reading to them, singing to them and talking to other adults when they are around.
• Parents might wonder if some ways of talking to babies are better than others.
• Research has found that children raised in language-rich environments may have a leg up in early language development.
• This advantage, however, came from talk directed at the child – not speech between others overheard by the child.

• Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) affects about one in 40 children between ages 3 and 17, according to the National Survey of Children's Health.
• Of those tested for various genes linked to the condition, nearly everyonewith disruptive mutations of the gene CHD8 has autism.
• "Longer term, it also would require large scale clinical trials before a treatment could be approved for human use."
• The restoration was not complete but was powerful enough that the drug merits closer study as a potential way to augment neurogenesis in CHD8-deficiency, Lu says.

• Experts have long understood that regular running raises dopamine activity in the brain and may protect nerve cells from damage.
• In addition, past research has tied exercise-driven boosts in the dopamine-triggering chemical called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and in dopamine levels to improvements in learning and memory.
• Additionally, when BDNF levels were artificially reduced, running did not lead to additional dopamine release.
• Further funding support was provided by the Marlene and Paolo Fresco Institute for Parkinson's and Movement Disorders.

• Rethink-ALZ.com is intended to provide access, visibility and information on Cassava Sciences Phase 3 safety and efficacy studies of oral simufilam in people with Alzheimers disease.
• I think clinical sites around the country are quite excited by the potential of oral simufilam to impact Alzheimers disease, said James Kupiec, MD, Chief Clinical Development Officer at Cassava Sciences.
• Rethink-ALZ.com is dedicated to enhance patient experience and enrollment for both of our on-going Phase 3 studies of oral simufilam in Alzheimers disease.
• Over 25 clinical sites across the country are now participating in the Phase 3 efficacy studies of simufilam in Alzheimers disease.