From “Eminence-based” to Evidence-based cognitive & mental healthcare: Time for quality and accountability

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing time­ly brain & men­tal health news, two excel­lent new books and a few fun brain teasers. #1. From “Emi­­nence-based” to Evi­­dence-based men­tal health­care: Time to focus on qual­i­ty and account­abil­i­ty “The real chal­lenge is not find­ing a ther­a­pist, it’s find­ing a ther­a­pist who knows how to provide…

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New DARPA initiative aims to harness cognitive science, sensors and machine learning to detect early brain signs of depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation

New Cog­ni­tive Sci­ence Tool to Shed Light on Men­tal Health (DARPA press release): Since Sept. 11, 2001, more than 30,000 active duty mem­bers and vet­er­ans have tak­en their own lives – four times as many as those killed in post-911 mil­i­tary oper­a­tions. Cur­rent meth­ods to detect ear­ly signs of behav­ioral and men­tal health risk factors…

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Neurotech start-up Paradromics raises $20M to address brain-related disorders via next-gen brain-computer interfaces

Neu­ralink Com­peti­tor Rais­es $20 Mil­lion for Brain Implants (Bloomberg): A com­peti­tor to Elon Musk’s Neu­ralink said it raised $20 mil­lion, enough to get it on track to intro­duce a new gen­er­a­tion of pow­er­ful and tiny elec­trodes to the human brain. Paradromics Inc., found­ed in 2015 about a year ahead of Neu­ralink, is build­ing brain-com­put­er inter­faces that…

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DARPA-funded nonsurgical neurotechnologies push the frontier of brain-machine interfaces

Rice Uni­ver­si­ty Charges Into the Future with Mag­net­ics and Bioim­plants (All About Cir­cuits): Advances in self-gen­er­at­ing drug deliv­ery sys­tems, brain-to-brain com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and injury mit­i­ga­tion tech­nolo­gies are just some of the newest research com­ing down the pipeline from Rice Uni­ver­si­ty. Sev­er­al research projects fund­ed by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agen­cy’s (DARPA) N3 pro­gram might herald…

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Anticipating ethical implications of DARPA’s neurotechnology push

___ The Pentagon’s Push to Pro­gram Sol­diers’ Brains (The Atlantic): “…darpa offi­cials refer to the poten­tial con­se­quences of neu­rotech­nol­o­gy by invok­ing the acronym elsi, a term of art devised for the Human Genome Project. It stands for “eth­i­cal, legal, social impli­ca­tions.” The man who led the dis­cus­sion on ethics among the research teams 

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