Huge News For Your Brain November 11, 2025 But first . . . Since the deal to reopen the government lasts only until the end of January, don’t we get to do this again in a few weeks if the Republicans continue to refuse to meet their constituents’ healthcare needs? In the meantime, we’ve reopened the government, staving off tremendous hardship and economic loss . . . . . . and shown that we’re the ones who want to feed poor kids and seniors and veterans on food stamps . . . we’re the ones who want people to have affordable health care . . . they’re the ones who fight these things, preferring tax cuts for billionaires and $40 billion for Argentina. (Not that I have anything against Argentina.) If they don’t come to their sense and relent, we just resume the fight in January, when they’ll again need our votes to keep the government open, having shown that we really did give them every opportunity to do the right thing. No? Apologies in advance if I’m being dense. I was in computer hell much of the day. WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR SOME If you commit crimes for Trump or can bribe him adequately, you get a pardon. If you oppose him, you get indicted. Judge Mark L. Wolf lays it out so beautifully: Why I Am Leaving the Federal Bench It is to cry. Felon Freed by Trump Is Sentenced Again, This Time to 27 Months And (as you’ll see if you have time to read it) he’s hardly the only one. The loss of a professional, apolitical Justice Department strikes me as 10,000 times more important than (say) who uses what bathroom (does the federal government really need to get involved?) or Hunter Biden’s laptop (if there were something of real significance on it, wouldn’t the Trump regime have released it by now?). HURRICANE SEASON From your amazing fellow reader Bryan Norcross: no more this year; A.I. is now the best predictor. And now . . . HUGE NEWS FOR YOUR BRAIN From your amazing fellow reader Jeff Zimman, Co-founder of BrainHQ parent Posit Science: In case you missed it, I wanted to share big news from an NIH-funded study that has gotten an outpouring of press across the globe because of its huge implications for aging and dementia. A neuroimaging team at McGill found 10 weeks of daily BrainHQ training drove significant and substantial rejuvenation in the brain’s cholinergic system. It’s the system that produces acetylcholine (the “pay attention” chemical) at the precise moment it’s needed. We’ve known for decades that this system becomes increasingly sluggish (downregulates) with normal aging and plummets with pre-dementia and Alzheimer’s. In fact, the most prescribed class of drugs for Alzheimer’s – cholinesterase inhibitors such as Aricept® – artificially flood the brain with acetylcholine to provide some transient relief, but do not fix the underlying sluggishness in its production. BrainHQ just became the first intervention of any kind shown to upregulate acetylcholine production. The upregulation from 10 weeks of BrainHQ training at 30 minutes per day was about equal to the amount an average older adult downregulates over a decade. And the gain persisted 3 months after the training ended. The control group did attentionally-demanding online games (like solitaire and candy crush) for an equal amount of time and showed no improvement. As noted by the researchers, WHAT you do matters — just staying mentally active is not enough. The study provides a bio-chemical explanation of how BrainHQ rewires the brain and why BrainHQ, uniquely, has gotten the results seen across hundreds of studies. The implications for aging, pre-dementia and Alzheimer’s are compelling, and a new NIH grant has been awarded to do a similar study in MCI (pre-dementia). Many other conditions are associated with deficiencies in brain chemicals which BrainHQ is also designed to upregulate, suggesting a novel pathway for treatment. I believe historians will view this study as pivotal in the development of interventions to address numerous health conditions and also to help us all with improved peak performance [e.g., Tom Brady]. Jeff’s favorite write-up: Brain Training That Actually Works: World-First As Key Chemical Levels Restored To Those Of “Someone 10 Years Younger”.