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Beyond bulky VR headsets: Voice recognition, eye tracking, and natural gestures in the era of the metaverse and the “Medi-verse”

March 21, 2023 by Dr. Cori Lathan Leave a Comment

Imag­ine you have moved to a new city and bought a con­do adver­tised as “meta­verse enabled.” Upon clos­ing, along with the phys­i­cal keys to your con­do, you receive a unique cryp­to­graph­ic key to the com­mu­ni­ty. You move into your neigh­bor­hood both phys­i­cal­ly and dig­i­tal­ly. With the cryp­to key, you link your own per­son­al meta­verse pro­file to the con­do. This merges your per­son­al meta­verse, includ­ing a dig­i­tal cat­a­log of all the objects in your home, to a dig­i­tal map of the new space inte­grat­ing all the sen­sors and devices that con­trol the objects through the meta­verse. [Read more…] about Beyond bulky VR head­sets: Voice recog­ni­tion, eye track­ing, and nat­ur­al ges­tures in the era of the meta­verse and the “Medi-verse”

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Filed Under: Technology & Innovation Tagged With: AnthroTronix, AR display, eye-tracking, healthcare delivery, Medi-verse, metaverse, personal metaverse, spatial computing, stress relief, voice recognition, wearables

Ten resources, brain teasers and illusions to celebrate Brain Awareness Week 2023

March 15, 2023 by SharpBrains Leave a Comment

We invite you to cel­e­brate Brain Aware­ness Week (March 13–19th, 2023) by learn­ing more about that key yet often-over­looked organ and by putting it to good use via some fun brain teasers and illusions 🙂

  1. Can you con­nect these pairs of words?
  2. Try these quick teasers to chal­lenge your work­ing memory
  3. Three clas­sic opti­cal illu­sions, explained
  4. Test your cog­ni­tive skills with these proverbs
  5. Math teas­er: Will you fin­ish your the­sis on time?
  6. What do you see? And, can you unsee it?
  7. Study exam­ines com­mon cog­ni­tive bias­es such as this one and ways to mit­i­gate them

About Brain Awareness Week:

Every March, Brain Aware­ness Week (BAW) unites the efforts of part­ner orga­ni­za­tions world­wide in a cel­e­bra­tion of the brain for peo­ple of all ages. Activ­i­ties are lim­it­ed only by the orga­niz­ers’ imag­i­na­tions and include open days at neu­ro­science labs; exhi­bi­tions about the brain; lec­tures on brain-relat­ed top­ics; social media cam­paigns; dis­plays at libraries and com­mu­ni­ty cen­ters; class­room work­shops; and more. This year BAW takes place March 13–19th, 2023.

  1. Vis­it the Cal­en­dar of Events Here
  2. Try many games, rid­dles, and puz­zles Here
  3. Explore use­ful fact­sheets Here

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Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: Brain Teasers, brain-awareness-week, cognitive biases, cognitive-skills, fun brain teasers, optical-illusions, quick teasers, Working-memory

The 7 Habits of Highly Stress-Resilient Minds

March 7, 2023 by Greater Good Science Center Leave a Comment

Are you suf­fer­ing from chron­ic stress? Many of us are—whether we’re stressed out by our jobs, com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ships, care­giv­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties, or the gen­er­al state of the world.

That’s where Elis­sa Epel’s new book, The Stress Pre­scrip­tion, comes in. A health psy­chol­o­gist and direc­tor of the Aging, Metab­o­lism, and Emo­tions Cen­ter at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San Fran­cis­co, Epel explains how stress affects our bod­ies and minds—including our health, hap­pi­ness, and longevity—and how to man­age it in the best way possible.

Too many of us are in a con­stant state of alert­ness, she argues, which makes us ill-pre­pared to nav­i­gate the every­day stres­sors and big­ger upsets that occur when liv­ing a full life. We may think we’re relaxed, but we’re actu­al­ly main­tain­ing a low-lev­el vig­i­lance that’s hard on our bod­ies. Con­stant phys­i­o­log­i­cal strain can short­en our telom­eres (the caps at the ends of our DNA that pro­tect it from aging)—a process she wrote about in her best­selling book, The Telom­ere Effect.

Epel empha­sizes that not all stress is inher­ent­ly bad—and that we shouldn’t aim for a stress-free life. We need our phys­i­o­log­i­cal stress response to sur­vive, as it can come in handy when we’re gear­ing up to per­form or fac­ing an actu­al life-or-death threat. [Read more…] about The 7 Habits of High­ly Stress-Resilient Minds

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: aging, chronic-stress, deep breathing, Gratitude, high-intensity interval training, meditation, mindfulness, mindfulness-meditation, physiological stress, Stress Prescription, Stress Response

CMS: anti-amyloid drug Leqembi (lecanemab) doesn’t meet the “reasonable and necessary” standard required for wider Medicare coverage

February 28, 2023 by SharpBrains Leave a Comment

CMS Sticks to Sharply Lim­it­ed Cov­er­age of New Alzheimer’s Drug, Leqem­bi (Man­aged Health­care Executive):

For now, CMS (Note: Cen­ters for Medicare & Med­ic­aid Ser­vices) is stick­ing to the cov­er­age deci­sion it made for Aduhelm (adu­canum­ab) and apply­ing it Leqem­bi (lecanemab). The deci­sion lim­its Medicare cov­er­age of the two Alzheimer disease’s drugs to Medicare ben­e­fi­cia­ries who have enrolled in clin­i­cal tri­als of the drugs

The deci­sion, which was announced in a press release yes­ter­day, was denounced in strong lan­guage by the Alzheimer’s Asso­ci­a­tion. [Read more…] about CMS: anti-amy­loid drug Leqem­bi (lecanemab) doesn’t meet the “rea­son­able and nec­es­sary” stan­dard required for wider Medicare coverage

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: aducanumab, Aduhelm, Alzheimer's drug, Alzheimers-Association, amyloid, CMS, dementia, FDA, lecanemab, Leqembi, Medicare, monoclonal antibodies

BrainHealth Week starts today! Plus: dancing, personalized mental health, brain stimulation and more

February 20, 2023 by SharpBrains Leave a Comment

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains e‑newsletter, annouc­ing the kick-off of Brain­Health Week and fea­tur­ing some stim­u­lat­ing resources and teasers.

#1. Brain­Health Week (Feb­ru­ary 20–24th) starts today:

Explore many fun events includ­ing a dai­ly text chal­lenge, a talk with the always great Dr. Tom Insel, and more!

#2. With­out Brain Health, you do not have Health

Impor­tant arti­cle giv­en that “It typ­i­cal­ly takes twen­ty to forty years or more for sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­er­ies to mean­ing­ful­ly ben­e­fit human life. We can­not wait that long.” — Wise words!

#3. Sin Salud Cere­bral, Ust­ed no tiene Salud –same arti­cle, in Span­ish, for extra men­tal stim­u­la­tion and for sharing 🙂

“En los últi­mos diez años, los neu­ro­ci­en­tifi­cos hemos des­cu­bier­to mucho acer­ca de cómo fun­ciona el cere­bro, cómo mejo­rar la salud y el fun­cionamien­to del cere­bro y la mente a lo largo de la vida, y cómo esto con­tribuye a nues­tra salud y bien­es­tar en gen­er­al. Únase a nosotros y asegúrese de que los mejores años de su cere­bro están aún por venir, recor­dan­do que: Sin salud cere­bral, ust­ed no tiene salud.”

#4. Ball­room danc­ing can reduce aging-relat­ed brain atro­phy in the hip­pocam­pus (and, more than tread­mill walking!)

“(Danc­ing) gen­er­at­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly greater improve­ments than tread­mill walk­ing on one mea­sure of exec­u­tive func­tion and on pro­cess­ing speed, which is the time it takes to respond to or process infor­ma­tion. Com­pared with walk­ing, danc­ing was also asso­ci­at­ed with reduced brain atro­phy in the hip­pocam­pus – a brain region that is key to mem­o­ry func­tion­ing and is par­tic­u­lar­ly affect­ed by Alzheimer’s dis­ease … We think that social danc­ing may be more ben­e­fi­cial than walk­ing because it is phys­i­cal­ly, social­ly and cog­ni­tive­ly demand­ing – and there­fore strength­ens a wide net­work of brain regions.”

#5. Alto Neu­ro­science rais­es $60M (equi­ty + cred­it) to help fix the “tri­al and error” approach to psy­chi­atric medication

“To do so, Alto is pair­ing a trove of data on EEG activ­i­ty, genet­ics, behav­ioral task mea­sure­ments and oth­er fac­tors to see which of its drugs fits best with patients who have depres­sion, post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der and oth­er men­tal health con­di­tions. The company’s arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence plat­form homes in on three buck­ets: cog­ni­tion, emo­tion and sleep.”

#6. Voice bio­mark­er plat­form Sonde Health rais­es $19.25M to spread access to men­tal health mon­i­tor­ing and beyond

“GN Group will inte­grate Sonde’s Men­tal Fit­ness vocal bio­mark­er into its hear­ing prod­ucts. The com­pa­ny is already work­ing with Sonde to devel­op an MCI vocal bio­mark­er. Qual­comm, which has already inte­grat­ed Sonde’s vocal bio­mark­ers into its mobile device chipsets, has extend­ed the rela­tion­ship to include its wear­able chipsets.”

#7. The Euro­pean Soci­ety for Brain Stim­u­la­tion oppos­es EU reclas­si­fi­ca­tion of TMS and tDCS, claim­ing a flawed safe­ty assessment

“To put this into per­spec­tive, the like­li­hood of a seizure from rTMS (0.003%) is low­er than that asso­ci­at­ed with the use of anti­de­pres­sants and antipsy­chotics (0.1–1, 5%) … More­over, when such seizures occur they do so most­ly out­side the clinician’s office, by con­trast with rTMS (Per­era et al., 2016). For low inten­si­ty tDCS, tACS, tRNS seizure risk is com­plete­ly absent … As an organ­i­sa­tion and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of NIBS clin­i­cians and pro­fes­sion­als from across Europe, we, the ESBS, there­fore dis­agree with this EU deci­sion and in par­tic­u­lar with the fac­tu­al­ly incor­rect jus­ti­fi­ca­tions of that deci­sion to reclas­si­fy TMS and TES as inva­sive technologies”

Final­ly, a cou­ple of brain teasers to help you test your men­tal rota­tion cog­ni­tive skills:

#8. Can you read a map?

#9. Brain teas­er to stim­u­late your men­tal imagery, spa­tial rota­tion … and appetite

Have a great Brain­Health Week!

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: Alto Neuroscience, Alzheimer’s Disease, brain stimulation, Brain Teasers, brain-teaser, BrainHealth Week, cerebral, cognitive-skills, dancing, mental health, mental-fitness, personalized, salud, salud cerebral, Sonde, tDCS, TMS, vocal biomarker

Sin salud cerebral, usted no tiene salud

February 14, 2023 by Dr. Sandra Bond Chapman Leave a Comment

A lo largo de la vida, su cere­bro va a exper­i­men­tar un desar­rol­lo extra­or­di­nario. Su cere­bro es el órgano más adapt­able y mod­i­fi­ca­ble de su cuer­po, y puede cam­biar tan­to pos­i­ti­va como neg­a­ti­va­mente, depen­di­en­do de cómo lo util­ice cada día. Sim­ple­mente leyen­do este libro, su cere­bro ha cambiado.

¿Cuán­to y cómo va cam­biar en los próx­i­mos años y décadas? La bue­na noti­cia es que muchos de los dete­ri­oros rela­ciona­dos con la edad se pueden pre­venir, e inclu­so rever­tir. El hecho de que ust­ed éste leyen­do este libro me dice que está moti­va­do para enten­der y mejo­rar el fun­cionamien­to de su cere­bro, lo cual es el mejor pun­to de par­ti­da. [Read more…] about Sin salud cere­bral, ust­ed no tiene salud

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning, En Español Tagged With: capacidad cerebro, capital intelectual, Cerebro, ciencias, mente, mentes, neurocientificos, potencial cognitivo, salud cerebral

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Top 10 Brain Teasers and Illusions

  1. You think you know the colors? Try the Stroop Test
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  5. Quick brain teasers to flex two key men­tal mus­cles
  6. Count the Fs in this sentence
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  • Check our Top 25 Brain Teasers, Games and Illusions

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