Trans­form­ing Diag­no­sis (arti­cle by Thomas Insel, Direc­tor of the NIMH): “In a few weeks, the Amer­i­can Psy­chi­atric Asso­ci­a­tion will release its new edi­tion of the Diag­nos­tic and Sta­tis­ti­cal Man­ual of Men­tal Dis­or­ders (DSM-5)…While DSM has been described as a “Bible” for the field, it is, at best, a dic­tio­nary, cre­at­ing Read the rest of this entry »

 We’re hav­ing a good con­ver­sa­tion among Sharp­Brains Sum­mit par­tic­i­pants, prompted by the blog post Life­long brain well­ness and performance–not med­ical disease–drives grow­ing demand for dig­i­tal brain health solu­tions. In what is a beau­ti­ful exam­ple of the need to see both the for­est and the trees Read the rest of this entry »

Below you can find the full tran­script of our engag­ing Q&A ses­sion today, Fri­day March 16th, on brain sus­tain­abil­ity, retool­ing brain health, and applied neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, with Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, Sharp­Brains’ Co-Founder who’s just been named a Young Global Leader by the World Eco­nomic Forum. You can learn more about the topic by read­ing this 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit Meet­ing Report and this Info­graphic.

10:04
Great, we are ready to start!  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 »

We just came accross an excel­lent arti­cle by Dr. Thomas Insel, Direc­tor of the National Insti­tute for Men­tal Health (NIMH), titled An Emerg­ing Era of Big Data. The arti­cle is brief and worth read­ing. Here are two quotes:

- “Every era has its tech­no­log­i­cal icons. In the early 20th cen­tury, it was the air­plane and the auto­mo­bile. In the mid-20th cen­tury, it was the tele­vi­sion and the tele­phone. Now in the early 21st cen­tury, the smart phone and social net­work­ing appear to be the defin­ing tech­nolo­gies. And increas­ingly, the cur­rent era is begin­ning to look like the era of “big data” — a term that Read the rest of this entry »

Think­ing glob­ally to improve men­tal health: NIH announces inter­na­tional research ini­tia­tive (press release):

- “The Grand Chal­lenges in Global Men­tal Health Ini­tia­tive, led by the National Insti­tutes of Health and the Global Alliance for Chronic Dis­eases, has iden­ti­fied the top 40 bar­ri­ers to bet­ter men­tal health around the world. Sim­i­lar to past grand chal­lenges, which Read the rest of this entry »

An impres­sive recent ref­er­ence book on the future of brain care is Inte­gra­tive Neu­ro­science and Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine, edited by Evian Gor­don and Stephen H. Koslow (Oxford Uni­ver­sity Press; $89.95).

Book descrip­tion: This book takes an in depth and hard look at the cur­rent sta­tus and future direc­tion of treat­ment pre­dic­tive mark­ers in Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine for the brain from the per­spec­tives of the researchers on the cut­ting edge and those involved in health­care imple­men­ta­tion. The con­tents pro­vide a com­pre­hen­sive text suit­able as both a pithy intro­duc­tion to and a clear sum­mary of the “sci­ence to solu­tions” con­tin­uum in this devel­op­ing field of Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine and Inte­gra­tive Neu­ro­science. The sci­ence includes both mea­sures of genes using whole genome approaches and SNIPS as well as BRAIN­mark­ers of direct brain func­tion such as brain imag­ing, bio­phys­i­cal changes and objec­tive cog­ni­tive and behav­ioral mea­sure­ments. More infor­ma­tion below.

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36-Hour Offer

Dr. Evian Gor­don will speak at the upcom­ing 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit: Retool­ing Brain Health for the 21st Cen­tury (March 30th — April 1st) and his firm, Brain Resource, is among Sum­mit Spon­sors. Thanks to his sup­port, we are pleased to announce the fol­low­ing offer: TEN pro­fes­sion­als who reg­is­ter to attend the 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit over the next 36 hours, from now until Fri­day March 4th, 7pm US Pacific Time, will each receive a com­pli­men­tary hard­copy of the book Inte­gra­tive Neu­ro­science and Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine. If more than ten peo­ple reg­is­ter by then, we will select ten names at random.

We are also pleased to announce the addi­tion of 12 new Speak­ers and Mod­er­a­tors to the 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit — the result­ing agenda is turn­ing out to be noth­ing short of spec­tac­u­lar (in our, yes, a bit biased judgment):

• Alexan­dra More­house, CMO, AAA North California
• Dr. Evian Gor­don, CEO, Brain Resource
• Kath­leen Herath, Asst Vice Pres­i­dent, Nation­wide Insurance
• Dr. David Tal, Direc­tor, A.G.E. Mat­ters Clinic
• Paula Psyl­lakis, Senior Pol­icy Advi­sor, Ontario Min­istry of Research and Innovation
• Veronika Litin­ski, Advi­sor, MaRS Life Sci­ences and Health Care
• Dr. Joshua Stein­er­man, Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor, Albert Ein­stein Col­lege of Medicine
• Dr. Jef­frey Kaye, Direc­tor, NIA — ORCATECH
• Dr. John Rep­pas, Pol­icy Direc­tor, Neu­rotech­nol­ogy Indus­try Organization
• Dr. Justin Mar­ley, Chair Men­tal Health Infor­mat­ics Group, UK Royal Col­lege of Psychiatrists
• Dr. David Darby, Chief Med­ical Offi­cer, Cogstate
• Dr. John Hart, Med­ical Sci­ence Direc­tor, Cen­ter for Brain Health at UT-Dallas

-> Learn More and Reg­is­ter to Par­tic­i­pate in the Sum­mit Here, and get a chance at get­ting a com­pli­men­tary copy of the book Inte­gra­tive Neu­ro­science and Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine!

Read the rest of this entry »