Study: Building muscle mass helps delay cognitive decline beyond the value of exercise itself

By SharpBrains | September 19, 2022

A new rea­son to build mus­cle: brain health (The Globe and Mail): … a recent study from researchers at McGill Uni­ver­si­ty, pub­lished in the jour­nal JAMA Net­work Open, offers a new rea­son for con­tin­u­ing to work on build­ing mus­cle: It’s good for your brain, not just your biceps. Greater mus­cle mass, the results sug­gest, helps ward…

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Digital therapeutics pioneer Akili Interactive Labs goes public, raising $150M+; trades down 49% first day

By SharpBrains | August 23, 2022

Akili Inter­ac­tive is the lat­est com­pa­ny to go pub­lic via SPAC deal (Boston Busi­ness Jour­nal): Boston’s Akili Inter­ac­tive Labs Inc. is the lat­est Mass­a­chu­setts-based com­pa­ny to go pub­lic after com­plet­ing a reverse merg­er — in a year of mar­ket tur­moil that saw few local firms pass­ing the thresh­old between pri­vate and pub­lic sta­tus. Shares of…

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Update: Playing videogames may be more cognitively beneficial than other forms of screentime like social media, watching videos/ TV

By SharpBrains | June 30, 2022

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing time­ly brain & men­tal health news and a fun brain teas­er to put your tem­po­ral lobes to good use :-) #1. Study finds that play­ing videogames may be more cog­ni­tive­ly ben­e­fi­cial for chil­dren than oth­er forms of screen­time (social media, watch­ing videos/ TV) “Here, we esti­mat­ed the impact…

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Large neuroimaging study finds social isolation to be an early indicator of increased dementia risk

By The Conversation | June 23, 2022

Why do we get a buzz from being in large groups at fes­ti­vals, jubilees and oth­er pub­lic events? Accord­ing to the social brain hypoth­e­sis, it’s because the human brain specif­i­cal­ly evolved to sup­port social inter­ac­tions. Stud­ies have shown that belong­ing to a group can lead to improved well­be­ing and increased sat­is­fac­tion with life. Unfor­tu­nate­ly though, many…

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Study finds that playing videogames may be more cognitively beneficial for children than other forms of screentime (social media, watching videos/ TV)

By The Conversation | June 1, 2022

Many par­ents feel guilty when their chil­dren play video games for hours on end. Some even wor­ry it could make their chil­dren less clever. And, indeed, that’s a top­ic sci­en­tists have clashed over for years. In our new study, we inves­ti­gat­ed how video games affect the minds of chil­dren, inter­view­ing and test­ing more than 5,000 children…

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On mental fitness beliefs, lifestyles and new tools like apps, digital therapeutics, virtual reality, “brain age gaps” and more

By SharpBrains | May 31, 2022

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing time­ly brain & men­tal health news and a fun cou­ple of math brain teasers. #1. Study on the “ABCs of Men­tal Health” finds that sim­ply believ­ing you can improve men­tal well­be­ing helps actu­al­ly improve it Beliefs mat­ter. #2. “Dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics” vs. “Men­tal health apps”: A growing…

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