Trading cognitive declines
Working together may protect older people whose thinking skills are declining from getting burned on investments and other crucial decisions. A computer set-up that allowed a group of seniors to trade shares of political candidates from both parties during the 2008 primaries, much as stocks get traded, cut the financial losses of participants with brain-related problems in decision making, say neuropsychologist Natalie Denburg of the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City and her colleagues. Based on digital transactions, a software program created trading criteria that were automatically used to stop extremely bad trades from being finalized, the researchers report in an upcoming Neuropsychologia. —Bruce Bower