Study finds ultimate hack to protect teen brains from harmful screen time: Exercise (and good role-modeling)

Recent­ly, the Wall Street Jour­nal ran an arti­cle about how Insta­gram was affect­ing teen men­tal health. In par­tic­u­lar, some inter­nal stud­ies at Face­book (which owns Insta­gram) appeared to con­firm that when teen girls used the site, they suf­fered poor­er body image and were at increased risk for depres­sion and eat­ing dis­or­ders. But is social media…

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Debate: Will brain-computer interfaces replace smartphones and other “mediating” devices?

The Fifth Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion: where mind meets machine (The Nation­al): The Fifth Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion will make that con­nec­tion clos­er and seam­less, and will feel unmedi­at­ed. The smart device onto which we tap and into which we speak will dis­ap­pear. Brain-com­put­er inter­faces will replace them…Can we con­nect our brains – and our minds – to machines?…

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Four guidelines for smart use of smartphones

These days, you can’t go any­where with­out hear­ing about how tech­nol­o­gy is ruin­ing every­thing, includ­ing our hap­pi­ness. There is some truth to this, but it’s not the whole sto­ry. Tech­nol­o­gy can be bad for us—for exam­ple, when social media gives us FOMO (fear of miss­ing out) or traps us in fil­ter bub­bles that pre­vent us from…

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Q&A: What does the Facebook acquisition of CTRL-Labs mean for Neurotechnology and Augmented & Virtual Reality?

__________ While sit­ting at din­ner with an unsus­pect­ing friend, my phone blew up with odd­­­ly-late mes­sages from fel­low neu­rotech­nol­o­gy com­rades. CTRL-Labs announced their impend­ing acqui­si­tion by Face­book and inte­gra­tion into Face­book Real­i­ty Labs (respon­si­ble for Ocu­lus et al.), for enough mon­ey to buy my guilt-induc­ing­­ly-expen­­sive New York cof­fee for a mea­ger 550,000 years. Woah—so very many ques­tions. I…

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Virtual reality games and related neurotechnologies spark a new generation of dementia & cognitive tests

__________ The Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Game Gath­er­ing Data for Demen­tia Researchers (Bloomberg): “Nav­i­gat­ing an ice-walled lake or scour­ing a swamp for a hid­den mon­ster may sound like a fun premise for a vir­­tu­al-real­i­­ty video game. But there’s a seri­ous pur­pose behind the new game Sea Hero Quest VR: help­ing neu­ro­sci­en­tists design a new test for dementia.

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E‑Newsletter: Neuroimaging + machine learning can predict, with 96% accuracy, whether high-risk 6‑month-old babies will develop autism spectrum disorder (ASD) by age 2

_____ Time for Sharp­Brains’ June e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing fas­ci­nat­ing sci­en­tif­ic find­ings, promis­ing assess­ments, ther­a­pies and brain health mon­i­tor­ing tools…and some fun opti­cal illu­sions :-) New research Study com­bines neu­roimag­ing with machine learn­ing to pre­dict, with 96% accu­ra­cy, whether high-risk 6‑month-old babies will devel­op autism spec­trum dis­or­der (ASD) by age 2 Cog­ni­tive Train­ing or Gingko Bilo­ba to pre­vent cog­ni­tive decline and…

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