Deans' stroke musings: Aging and risk taking: toward an integration of cognitive, emotional, and neurobiological perspectives

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Monday, April 28, 2014

Aging and risk taking: toward an integration of cognitive, emotional, and neurobiological perspectives

I'm sure I'm an outlier, I will take practically any risk for the intellectual and physical challenge. Life is really not living if I'm not doing that. See my earlier quote from Hunter S. Thompson.
http://www.dovepress.com/articles.php?article_id=16552

Authors: Shao R, Lee TMC

Published Date April 2014 Volume 2014:3 Pages 47 - 62

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2147/NAN.S35914

Received:	21 December 2013
Accepted:	07 February 2014
Published:	25 April 2014

Robin Shao,^1,2 Tatia MC Lee^1–3

¹Laboratory of Neuropsychology, ²Laboratory of Social Cognitive Affective Neuroscience, ³The State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Abstract: In this article, we characterize the relationship between natural aging and risky decision making through an integration of cognitive, emotional, and neurobiological theories on the effects of natural aging. Based on the existing evidence, we propose that the positivity emotional bias in elderly adults steers them away from taking high risks and toward more conservative approaches during decision making as part of their positive emotional regulatory strategies. However, aging is also associated with marked declines in cognitive functioning, such as attention and working memory, as well as impaired reinforcement-based associative learning, which arises from anatomical and functional declines in the dopaminergic transmission systems and in distinct brain regions such as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. In consequence, elderly adults may deviate from their usual conservative stance and toward more risk-taking tendencies, as observed in a subset of studies, if the demands of the risk-taking task exceed their cognitive and learning capacities. More empirical investigations are needed to determine the key factors that influence elderly individuals' decision making and behavior in risky situations. Research in this field is likely to have important practical implications for the financial and medical decision making of elderly adults, as well as promoting designated help targeting the elderly population in making important life decisions.