Brain Health in 2030: Navigating Neuroplasticity & the Digital Health Market

Brain Health in 2030: Nav­i­gat­ing Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty & the Dig­i­tal Health Mar­ket from Sharp­Brains Keynote deliv­ered by Álvaro Fer­nán­dez, CEO of Sharp­Brains, dur­ing cor­po­rate retreat. Key mes­sage: Our very human brains and minds are the most sophis­ti­cat­ed tech­nol­o­gy at our dis­pos­al, so we should invest more time learn­ing about how they work and har­ness­ing neu­ro­­plas­tic­i­­ty-based methods…

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Neurotech, neuroethics and brain data in context: Are “neurorights” the way to mental privacy?

Neu­rotech­nolo­gies – devices that inter­act direct­ly with the brain or ner­vous sys­tem – were once dis­missed as the stuff of sci­ence fic­tion. Not any­more. Sev­er­al com­pa­nies are try­ing to devel­op brain-com­put­er inter­faces, or BCIs, in hopes of help­ing patients with severe paral­y­sis or oth­er neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­ders. Entre­pre­neur Elon Musk’s com­pa­ny Neu­ralink, for exam­ple, recent­ly received…

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Challenge ahead: Harnessing technology for good mental health

Mak­ing tech­nol­o­gy an ally in men­tal health care (Fun­dación Inno­vación Bank­in­ter): Inter­est in using tech­nol­o­gy for men­tal health dates back to the mid twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. “Stud­ies began back in the 1960s, giv­en the grow­ing con­cern about addic­tion in chil­dren (espe­cial­ly) and adults,” clar­i­fies Álvaro Fer­nán­dez Ibáñez about the begin­ning of this dis­ci­pline. Sesame Street, the…

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On schools, mental health, digital surveillance, student privacy and parental input

Op-Ed: School sur­veil­lance on stu­dents’ lap­tops will not help solve the youth men­tal health cri­sis (Los Ange­les Times): In the past year, school dis­tricts in Cal­i­for­nia and else­where have con­tract­ed with dig­i­tal sur­veil­lance com­pa­nies to spy on stu­dents at school and home, cit­ing the need for men­tal health sup­port dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Despite being a vigilant…

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Beacon Biosignals raises $27M to scale EEG, AI-based neurobiomarker discovery platform

Neu­rotech start­up Bea­con Biosig­nals scores $27M to bring AI to EEG analy­sis (Med­C­i­ty News): Elec­troen­cephalog­ra­phy is a decades-old tech­nique for cap­tur­ing brain activ­i­ty, data that are used to eval­u­ate brain dis­or­ders. Bea­con Biosig­nals is apply­ing arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to these tests, and the neu­rotech­nol­o­gy start­up has found a ready mar­ket in phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies inter­est­ed in assess­ing how…

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Trend: Harnessing digital tech to improve mental health and wellness

From mind­ful­ness apps to vir­tu­al ther­a­py ses­sions, dig­i­tal tools offer instant access to well­ness resources (The Globe and Mail): In 2015, Brie Code was work­ing at lead­ing video game com­pa­ny Ubisoft as lead arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence pro­gram­mer when she real­ized that many peo­ple she knew – about half, by her esti­ma­tion – found video games boring.

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