Employ­ers turn­ing to ‘brain health’ tools to reduce stress, increase pro­duc­tiv­ity (HR.BLR.com):
“Brain health is not just about dis­ease. It’s not just about depres­sion or anx­i­ety,” says Read the rest of this entry »

Mas­ter­ing emo­tions by sharp­en­ing mem­ory? It just might work (Los Ange­les Times):

“Emo­tional reg­u­la­tion — the abil­ity to take neg­a­tive feel­ings and rec­og­nize, accept and chan­nel them prop­erly — is an Achilles’ heel for many peo­ple, but espe­cially for those with anxiety-related dis­or­ders, Read the rest of this entry »

Authors: Develop dig­i­tal games to improve brain func­tion and well-being (UW-Madison News):

“Neu­ro­sci­en­tists should help to develop com­pelling dig­i­tal games that boost brain func­tion and improve well-being, say two pro­fes­sors spe­cial­iz­ing in the field in a com­men­tary arti­cle pub­lished in the sci­ence jour­nal Nature. In the Feb. 28 issue, the two — Daphne Bave­lier of the Uni­ver­sity of Rochester and Richard J. David­son of the Uni­ver­sity of Wisconsin-Madison — urge game design­ers and brain sci­en­tists to work together to design new games that train the brain, pro­duc­ing pos­i­tive effects on behav­ior, such as decreas­ing anx­i­ety, sharp­en­ing atten­tion and improv­ing empathy.”

To Learn More:

• National Sci­ence Foun­da­tion report: Can inter­ac­tive media boost atten­tion and well-being? (open access)
• Nature com­men­tary (requires subscription)
• Learn­ing with Video Games: A Rev­o­lu­tion in Edu­ca­tion and Training?

The Brain: On the Front­line of Dig­i­tal Health in the Work­place (Huff­in­g­ton Post):

“…It is esti­mated that some two bil­lion world­wide, one-third of the global pop­u­la­tion, suf­fer from brain-based health and pro­duc­tiv­ity chal­lenges with a related cost bur­den of more than $2 tril­lion. The broad scope of this mar­ket is empha­sized fur­ther when con­sid­er­a­tion is given to Read the rest of this entry »

Mem­ory Loss Could Be The Fault Of Your Meds, Not Your Age (Inter­na­tional Busi­ness Times):

“Mem­ory loss isn’t always an inevitable sign of get­ting old – in some cases, com­mon med­ica­tions that seniors take to treat insom­nia, anx­i­ety, or even aller­gies could be to blame…Tannenbaum and her col­leagues recently inves­ti­gated what kinds of med­ica­tion are most likely to affect both mem­ory and con­cen­tra­tion. In a meta-analysis of 162 exper­i­ments on var­i­ous drugs, Tan­nen­baum con­cluded that the recur­rent use of sev­eral kinds of med­ica­tions can have impacts Read the rest of this entry »

Young Depres­sive Patients Respond To Com­puter Ther­apy (Med­ical News Today):

- “Depres­sion is com­mon in ado­les­cents, although many are reluc­tant to seek pro­fes­sional help. Accord­ing to a study pub­lished in BMJ, spe­cial­ized com­puter ther­apy is just as effec­tive as Read the rest of this entry »

(Editor’s Note: this is Part 2 of the new 3-part series writ­ten by Dr. Evian Gor­don draw­ing from his par­tic­i­pa­tion at the Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine World Con­gress on Jan­u­ary, 23, 2012 at Stan­ford University.)

Most Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine research in Psy­chi­a­try using mol­e­c­u­lar mea­sures alone have failed to repli­cate. Whilst dis­ap­point­ing, this is not sur­pris­ing, since 80% of human 25,000 genes have some effect on the brain.

There are there­fore grow­ing efforts expand­ing Genomic Bio­mark­ers in Psy­chi­a­try to Neu­roimag­ing (all Brain-based bio­log­i­cal and cog­ni­tive mea­sures). Some approaches tar­get Read the rest of this entry »