Study: Self-guided internet-delivered treatment can significantly reduce ADHD symptoms among adults

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Although ADHD was orig­i­nal­ly con­sid­ered to be a dis­or­der of child­hood, it has been clear for years that it also impacts adults. At least 60% of chil­dren diag­nosed with ADHD strug­gle with symp­toms into adult­hood and the esti­mat­ed preva­lence of ADHD in adults is between 4 and 5%.

As with chil­dren and teens, med­ica­tion treat­ment is exten­sive­ly used to treat ADHD in adults. Although med­ica­tion is a core treat­ment for adult ADHD, and helps many indi­vid­u­als, many con­tin­ue to expe­ri­ence impair­ment and some expe­ri­ence adverse effects that pre­clude ongo­ing med­ica­tion treat­ment. [Read more…] about Study: Self-guid­ed inter­net-deliv­ered treat­ment can sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce ADHD symp­toms among adults

How the Arts transform our Brains, Bodies, and Minds

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One of my favorite say­ings comes from David Thore­au: “My life has been the poem I would have writ / But I could not both live and utter it.” It speaks to the way that life and art are inter­twined, and how we gain so much from liv­ing life with a sense of beau­ty and aes­thet­ics in mind.

There are many ways art infus­es my own life—from singing and play­ing gui­tar to read­ing nov­els and attend­ing plays, which all help to improve my mood and enhance my sense of won­der with the world. Prob­a­bly, neu­roaes­thet­ics many of you feel the same way. Some of you may have felt you’ve even been saved by art.

[Read more…] about How the Arts trans­form our Brains, Bod­ies, and Minds

Final week to nominate teachers for the $1M Global Teacher Prize 2023

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Dear friends,

We hope you are doing well.

There is now less than one week to go until appli­ca­tions and nom­i­na­tions close for the Glob­al Teacher Prize, and we want­ed to ask you to help us spread the word. The Glob­al Teacher Prize serves to under­line the impor­tance of edu­ca­tors and the fact that, through­out the world, their efforts deserve to be recog­nised and cel­e­brat­ed. It seeks to acknowl­edge the impact of the very best teach­ers – not only on their stu­dents but on the com­mu­ni­ties around them. [Read more…] about Final week to nom­i­nate teach­ers for the $1M Glob­al Teacher Prize 2023

Smartphone-based cognitive behavioral therapy found to significantly decrease insomnia, substantially outperforming sleep education

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Dig­i­tal Ther­a­py for Insom­nia More Effec­tive Than Sleep Edu­ca­tion, Study Finds (Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Man­aged Care):

A smart­phone-based, Chi­nese culture­–adapted dig­i­tal cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py for insom­nia (DCBT‑I) appli­ca­tion improved insom­nia sever­i­ty com­pared with sleep edu­ca­tion, accord­ing to find­ings of a study pub­lished in JAMA Net­work Open.

Researchers want­ed to study the effi­ca­cy of this DCBT‑I app com­pared with sleep edu­ca­tion using the same app … “To our knowl­edge, this is the first RCT [ran­dom­ized clin­i­cal tri­al] in which the con­trol group received sleep edu­ca­tion pro­vid­ed using the same inter­face as an inter­ven­tion,” said the researchers. [Read more…] about Smart­phone-based cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py found to sig­nif­i­cant­ly decrease insom­nia, sub­stan­tial­ly out­per­form­ing sleep education

Should doctors prescribe lecanemab (Leqembi) to women? The answer, given available evidence, is probably No

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Data from the CLARITY tri­al ear­li­er this year was sup­posed to be the crown­ing glo­ry of the amy­loid hypoth­e­sis, vin­di­ca­tion for pro­po­nents of this long-held but much-maligned the­o­ry of Alzheimer’s disease.

Yet the results left many feel­ing under­whelmed, and even the study authors noncommittal.

The CLARITY tri­al has many admirable fea­tures. It recruit­ed close to 1800 peo­ple from around the world, pret­ty bal­anced between women and men. While the major­i­ty were white, 17% of the cohort was Asian and 12% Latino.

Choice of pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary out­comes were impec­ca­ble. The pri­ma­ry out­come was the Clin­i­cal Demen­tia Rat­ing sum of box­es (CDR-SB), a score­card of sorts rat­ed by a clin­i­cian across the domains of mem­o­ry, ori­en­ta­tion, prob­lem solv­ing, com­mu­ni­ty affairs, home duties and per­son­al care. Sec­ondary out­comes includ­ed stan­dard mea­sures of glob­al cog­ni­tion, dai­ly func­tion, as well as bio­mark­ers in the brain, from the CSF and blood.

So what hap­pened? [Read more…] about Should doc­tors pre­scribe lecanemab (Leqem­bi) to women? The answer, giv­en avail­able evi­dence, is prob­a­bly No

Study shows the power of electroencephalography and machine learning to help predict response to psychotherapy (or lack thereof) in patients with PTSD

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A fas­ci­nat­ing study just pub­lished in Nature Men­tal Health aimed at help­ing pre­dict the out­comes of psy­chother­a­py for patients with Post-Trau­mat­ic Stress Dis­or­der (PTSD) using Machine Learn­ing (ML) and elec­troen­cephalog­ra­phy (EEG) data.

PTSD is a men­tal health con­di­tion trig­gered by expe­ri­enc­ing or wit­ness­ing a trau­mat­ic event; two evi­dence-based treatments–Prolonged Expo­sure (PE) and Cog­ni­tive Pro­cess­ing Ther­a­py (CPT)–are com­mon­ly used to help patients, with var­ied results.

In this study, the researchers used a super­vised machine learn­ing approach and high-den­si­ty rest­ing-state EEG (rsEEG) record­ings to pre­dict indi­vid­ual psy­chother­a­py out­comes. They iden­ti­fied a pre­treat­ment EEG con­nec­tiv­i­ty sig­na­ture in the eyes-open theta fre­quen­cy range that was pre­dic­tive of patients’ respons­es to both PE and CPT. [Read more…] about Study shows the pow­er of elec­troen­cephalog­ra­phy and machine learn­ing to help pre­dict response to psy­chother­a­py (or lack there­of) in patients with PTSD