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 are proud to release today what we believe is our best mar­ket intel­li­gence report so far, track­ing how fully auto­mated appli­ca­tions designed to assess, mon­i­tor and/ or enhance cog­ni­tion and brain func­tion­ing are trans­form­ing brain health, and health overall.

Here are a few exam­ples of what we mean by Dig­i­tal Brain Health, selected from among the 5 Mar­ket Lead­ers and 10 Com­pa­nies to Watch in 2013/2014 iden­ti­fied through our com­pre­hen­sive analysis.

• A 30-minute online brain health assess­ment and per­son­al­ized brain fit­ness pro­gram used by large com­pa­nies like Nation­wide Insur­ance and Accen­ture to improve employee’s pro­duc­tiv­ity and men­tal wellness
• An online cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­gram offered by sev­eral large AAA chap­ters to mem­bers age 50+ to improve dri­ving safety
• A com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­apy offered by the NHS in the UK as a first-line inter­ven­tion for anx­i­ety and depression
• A fully dig­i­tal head­set and plat­form that mea­sures basic brain states (such as level of atten­tion) and is being used to help peo­ple med­i­tate bet­ter and reduce ADHD symptoms
• An iPad-based assess­ment that tracks cog­ni­tive per­for­mance over time to help detect con­cus­sions among football/ hockey play­ers and mil­i­tary per­son­nel 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 »

Here you have a round-up of recent news on how cog­ni­tive and affec­tive neu­ro­science find­ings are start­ing to inform edu­ca­tion and health across the lifespan:

Pedi­a­tri­cians issue a call to aid chil­dren fac­ing ‘toxic stress’ (LA Times)

Teach­ers as Brain-Changers: Neu­ro­science and Learn­ing (EdWeek) Read the rest of this entry »

Good brief arti­cle at New Sci­en­tist, Maker of cog­ni­tive train­ing game seeks FDA approval:

- “Imag­ine walk­ing away from a doctor’s office with a pre­scrip­tion to play a video game. Brain Plas­tic­ity, the devel­oper of a cog­ni­tive train­ing game, has begun talks with the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion (FDA) to mar­ket the game as a ther­a­peu­tic drug.”

- “Brain Plas­tic­ity has been fine-tuning a game to help peo­ple with schiz­o­phre­nia improve the deficits in atten­tion and mem­ory that are often asso­ci­ated with the disorder.”

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 »

The use of a vari­ety of brain train­ing inter­ven­tions is grow­ing in the area of men­tal health. Emerg­ing evi­dence sug­gests that in the near future tar­geted brain train­ing may even be used to pre­vent sub­stance abuse. For exam­ple, train­ing work­ing mem­ory may reduce sub­stance abusers’ dis­count­ing of long-term rewards and pun­ish­ments — such dis­count­ing is one of the rea­sons why peo­ple sus­cep­ti­ble to addic­tions do not ben­e­fit from tra­di­tional informational/ edu­ca­tional approaches to drug prevention.

Let’s explore some expand­ing appli­ca­tions of brain train­ing, and much more, in this lat­est edi­tion of the monthly Sharp­Brains eNewslet­ter.

Brain Train­ing and Men­tal Health

ADHD: Brain Train­ing, Neu­ro­feed­back, Diet, and More: What can be done to fight ADHD and improve the lives of peo­ple suf­fer­ing from it?

Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity in the Brain of Chil­dren with Neu­ro­log­i­cal Dis­or­ders: Brain train­ing may be an option for chil­dren suf­fer­ing from Tourette Syn­drom to help reduce the symptoms.

Brain Train­ing and Schiz­o­phre­nia: Social cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­grams can boost schiz­o­phren­ics’ skills social skills.

Rethink­ing the Clas­si­fi­ca­tion of Men­tal Ill­ness: How can we rethink the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of psy­chopathol­ogy (via the new DSM-5) to reflect our cur­rent under­stand­ing of the brain as a dynamic system?

Upcom­ing events: Cog­ni­tive Reme­di­a­tion in Psy­chi­a­try (June 10th, NYC), Enter­tain­ment Soft­ware and Cog­ni­tive Neu­rother­a­peu­tics Soci­ety (Sep­tem­ber 19–20, San Francisco).

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Lifestyle for Brain Health

More Friends, Big­ger Brain: The num­ber of friends you have could be pre­dicted by the size of our amygdala!

Music and Demen­tia: Play­ing music pro­tects the brain later on. Music may also be used to teach new facts to peo­ple suf­fer­ing from dementia.

Exer­cise and Over­weight Chil­dren: Aer­o­bic exer­cise can boost over­weight chil­dren exec­u­tive functions.

The Brain Grows With Prac­tice…: We know that when the brain mas­ters a new skill, tar­geted brain areas/ cir­cuits get enlarged. We now know that those areas and cir­cuits even­tu­ally shrink back to nor­mal, but per­for­mance gain can be maintained!

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Food for Thought

What is Brain Fit­ness? What are Emerg­ing Oppor­tu­ni­ties to Retool Brain Health? Here are the answers by seven 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit Speakers.

Nav­i­gate through the 30 most pop­u­lar arti­cles of last year in SharpBrains.com to learn more about the brain and how to maintain/ enhance brain func­tion­ing across the lifes­pan..

Brain Teaser

Can you lis­ten to these laughs and dis­tin­guish whether it is a human or a com­puter laugh­ing? Also, given how good laugh­ing is…how about try­ing this to find out how much stressed you are? You may be surprised.

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