Better Brain Fitness with Drs. Josh Turknett and Tommy Wood

Your brain runs on roughly 400 miles of blood vessels, and most of them are too small to see on a standard scan. Vascular neurologist Dr. Jason Hinman of UCLA studies how those tiny vessels keep the brain's white matter healthy, and why vascular injury shows up alongside Alzheimer's disease in at least half of patients. We talk about:  new blood tests and MRI techniques that can pick up vascular changes years before today's scans do, the subtle signs clinicians tend to miss, and the most practical levers people have Links & Resources: The Hinman Lab at UCLA: hinmanlabucla.org/ To submit a question for us to answer on the podcast, go to brainjo.academy/question. To subscribe to the free Better Brain Fitness newsletter, join us when we record live, and get our Guide and Checklist to essential blood tests and nutrients, go to: betterbrain.fitness. Better Brain Fitness on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/better-brain-fitness-a-brainjo-production/id1441139485 Better Brain Fitness on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2bTSpFGJ38QUx25HW62fC7 Intro and Outro music composed and produced by Julienne Ellen.   

To grab your copy of the book, head to GeniusAndImpostor.com. To submit a question for us to answer on the podcast, go to brainjo.academy/question. To subscribe to the free Better Brain Fitness newsletter, join us when we record live, and get our Guide and Checklist to essential blood tests and nutrients, go to: betterbrain.fitness. To learn more about how you can boost brain fitness with neuroscience-based musical instruction, head to brainjo.academy.  Intro and Outro music composed and produced by Julienne Ellen.   

Henry Mahncke is the CEO of Posit Science and the creator of BrainHQ, the most researched brain training platform in the world. A neuroscientist who did his PhD with Michael Merzenich, considered the father of adult brain plasticity, Henry has spent two decades translating brain plasticity science into tools that actually improve brain health. In this conversation, we dig into why most brain training criticism misses the point, what the largest clinical trials really show, and why the future of brain health looks a lot like the evolution of physical fitness. In this episode: 00:00 — Introduction and Henry's background (PhD with Merzenich at UCSF, McKinsey, founding Posit Science) 07:00 — Brain training vs. cognitive training: why the distinction matters 09:00 — Brain plasticity as the driver of brain health, and why cognitive reserve is really just brain health 13:00 — Maladaptive brain plasticity: how aging actively degrades information processing through negative plasticity 18:00 — How BrainHQ exercises are designed: adaptive speed and accuracy training from psychophysics 24:00 — The transfer and generalization debate: does brain training improve real-world function? 28:00 — Clinical trial evidence: the Mayo/USC RCT, the ACTIVE study, and 300+ published papers 34:00 — The pharmaceutical analogy: why asking "does brain training work?" is the wrong question 37:00 — Who is brain training for? From post-concussive disorder to Tom Brady 44:00 — Brain training as physical exercise: the case for everyone at every age 46:00 — Real-world brain plasticity activities: racquet sports, musical instruments, foreign languages 51:00 — Josh's Brainjo origin story and what music training does for the brain 55:00 — The loss of skill learning in modern life and education 58:00 — The "dark ages" of brain health and where the field is headed To submit a question for us to answer on the podcast, go to brainjo.academy/question. To subscribe to the free Better Brain Fitness newsletter, join us when we record live, and get our Guide and Checklist to essential blood tests and nutrients, go to: betterbrain.fitness.  Click here to order Dr. Wood's book, "The Stimulated Mind."  Click here to pre-order Dr. Turknett's upcoming book, "The Genius and the Impostor" Intro and Outro music composed and produced by Julienne Ellen.   

Can a shingles vaccine cut your dementia risk by 20%? A series of landmark studies — published in Nature, Cell, and JAMA — say yes. In this episode, Tommy unpacks the research: how natural experiments in four countries produced one of the most compelling signals in dementia prevention, what might explain the effect beyond infection prevention, and what it means for your own vaccination decisions. In this episode: 00:00 — Introduction 00:52 — The new data on shingles vaccination and Alzheimer's risk 01:48 — The Stanford group and their regression discontinuity methodology 03:15 — How birthday-based eligibility creates a natural experiment (Wales, Canada, Australia) 05:28 — Results: a ~20% reduction in dementia diagnoses across all countries 06:52 — The Cell paper follow-up: benefits at every disease stage (unimpaired → MCI → dementia) 07:55 — Shingrix vs. Zostavax: the US natural experiment and a potentially larger effect 09:08 — Why does it work? Preventing illness, avoiding bed rest and disuse, immunomodulation 11:29 — Neuroinflammation and possible immune system "tuning" effects 12:27 — The sex difference: greater benefit in women in most (but not all) studies 15:52 — Summary of the evidence and what it means for dementia prevention strategy 17:36 — Josh's take: number needed to treat analysis 19:15 — Heterogeneous pathways to dementia and why vaccination fits the toolkit 21:13 — Practical advice: when to get vaccinated, repeat dosing, and personal risk assessment 25:36 — Wrap-up and how to submit questions Links & Resources: Shingles vaccine and dementia studies: Nature (Wales, 2025), Cell (Wales follow-up), JAMA/Lancet (Canada, Australia, US) Flu vaccine and dementia: Neurology (2026) Tommy's book: The Stimulated Mind To submit a question for us to answer on the podcast, go to brainjo.academy/question. To subscribe to the free Better Brain Fitness newsletter, join us when we record live, and get our Guide and Checklist to essential blood tests and nutrients, go to: betterbrain.fitness. To learn more about how you can boost brain fitness with neuroscience-based musical instruction, head to brainjo.academy.  Intro and Outro music composed and produced by Julienne Ellen.   

A recent study published in Nature Medicine claims a blood test can predict when you'll develop Alzheimer's disease, and it got a lot of attention. But how well does it actually work, and should you rush out and get tested? In this episode, we break down the study behind the headlines to understand what it really shows, where the major limitations lie, and what it means for anyone thinking about getting this kind of test. Topics and Questions Covered What P-Tau 217 is and why it's become the leading blood-based biomarker in Alzheimer's research. How researchers built a predictive "clock" from blood test data and what that process required. The important distinction between having pathology in your brain and actually developing dementia. Who should and should not be getting tested. What a large Norwegian population study reveals about the overlap between pathology and normal cognitive function. How biomarkers like this might eventually fit into a broader, more personalized approach to prevention. and more! -------------- To submit a question for us to answer on the podcast, go to brainjo.academy/question. To subscribe to the free Better Brain Fitness newsletter, join us when we record live, and get our Guide and Checklist to essential blood tests and nutrients, go to: betterbrain.fitness. To learn more about how you can boost brain fitness with neuroscience-based musical instruction, head to brainjo.academy.  Intro and Outro music composed and produced by Julienne Ellen.