These days, we all live under con­sid­er­able stress — eco­nomic chal­lenges, job demands, fam­ily ten­sions, always-on tech­nol­ogy and the 24-hour news cycle all con­tribute to cease­less worry. While many have learned to sim­ply “live with it,” this ongo­ing stress can, unless prop­erly man­aged, have a Read the rest of this entry »

War on Drugs (OpEd at the NYT):

“LAST year, more active-duty sol­diers com­mit­ted sui­cide than died in bat­tle… Worse, accord­ing to data not reported on until now, the mil­i­tary evi­dently responded to stress that afflicts sol­diers in Iraq and Afghanistan pri­mar­ily by drug­ging sol­diers on the front lines…The trou­ble is that we have no idea whether it’s effec­tive — or safe — to use antipsy­chotic drugs on a con­tin­u­ing basis to treat war-related stress or to numb or sedate those affected by it…The med­ical, mil­i­tary and civil­ian pop­u­la­tion share an inter­est in know­ing about patient-level pre­scrip­tion trends, med­ical indi­ca­tions for use, effec­tive­ness of con­ven­tional as well as off-label treat­ments, and lon­gi­tu­di­nal follow-up of those sol­diers receiv­ing psy­chotropic drugs.”

Related arti­cle: Mis­use & Abuse of ADHD Meds among col­lege students

Employ­ers turn­ing to ‘brain health’ tools to reduce stress, increase pro­duc­tiv­ity (HR.BLR.com):
“Brain health is not just about dis­ease. It’s not just about depres­sion or anx­i­ety,” says Read the rest of this entry »

There’s no doubt that the biggest buzz at this year’s Con­sumer Elec­tron­ics Show in Las Vegas didn’t come from the slimmest of tele­vi­sions, the most fash­ion­able head­phones or even a danc­ing robot.

The buzz of CES 2013 was firmly cen­tred on all things health and the Dig­i­tal Health Sum­mit is where the action was hap­pen­ing. On the eve of open­ing Ari­anna Huff­in­g­ton described what was about to hap­pen in Las Vegas as a ‘Per­fect Storm’

“I’m talk­ing about one of those moments in which sev­eral trends con­verge to cre­ate some­thing larger, a moment we will look back on as the time every­thing changed ….. this year’s CES has the poten­tial to be one of the most trans­for­ma­tive ever, and that’s because of a sig­nif­i­cant change in atti­tude about what role tech­nol­ogy can, and should, be play­ing in our lives. That’s the foun­da­tion of this per­fect storm”. Read the rest of this entry »

(Editor’s Note: every month we host an online Q&A with par­tic­i­pants in the e-course How To Be Your Own Brain Fit­ness Coach. This is the lightly edited and anonymized tran­script from the Jan­u­ary Q&A ses­sion; the Feb­ru­ary Q&A will take place on Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 12th)

2:02
OK, ready to go! Happy 2013 again. You can start writ­ing your ques­tions and com­ments in the box at the bot­tom, and hit Send.

2:04
Ques­tion 
Which activ­i­ties or games or web­sites do you rec­om­mend to improve mem­ory? Read the rest of this entry »

The Brain: On the Front­line of Dig­i­tal Health in the Work­place (Huff­in­g­ton Post):

“…It is esti­mated that some two bil­lion world­wide, one-third of the global pop­u­la­tion, suf­fer from brain-based health and pro­duc­tiv­ity chal­lenges with a related cost bur­den of more than $2 tril­lion. The broad scope of this mar­ket is empha­sized fur­ther when con­sid­er­a­tion is given to 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 »