Tracking Health and Wellness Applications of Brain Science

Update: The latest research and noninvasive neurotechnologies for brain health and mental fitness

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Time for a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter!

1. Food for (non­par­ti­san) Thought: Should heads of state and can­di­dates to high office pass a cognitive/ men­tal fit­ness test?

2. A school psy­chol­o­gist shares good tips to sup­port our kids and, yes, man­age our own stress. Three Ss to reduce the stress of “home­school­ing” our kids: Sim­pli­fy, Struc­ture, Sup­port.

3. Wow. Mind­strong Health rais­es $100M to trans­form how we mea­sure and pro­mote men­tal health.

4. Great part­ner­ship! Kaiser Per­ma­nente offers Calm men­tal fit­ness app at no cost to mil­lions of mem­bers.

5. “Just as you can’t self-intro­spect to deter­mine your cho­les­terol, much of the high­est-val­ue infor­ma­tion about our­selves and each oth­er sits out­side our con­scious aware­ness.” — Bryan John­son, Founder and CEO of Ker­nel, as Ker­nel launch­es Neu­ro­science as a Ser­vice (NaaS) built on non-inva­sive brain record­ing tech­nol­o­gy.

6. Fas­ci­nat­ing con­ver­sa­tion on how and why “Prac­tice actu­al­ly changes the phys­i­cal­i­ty of your brain” — Q&A with Rick Han­son on Neu­rod­har­ma, brain sci­ence, per­son­al prac­tice and well-being

7. May this trend con­tin­ue (and for bet­ter rea­sons): Grow­ing inter­est in dig­i­tal men­tal health among insur­ers and med­ical care providers.

8. Par­tic­u­lar­ly promis­ing for mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis, ocu­lar hyper­ten­sion, dia­betes, and trau­mat­ic brain injury: Portable brain assess­ment device by Head­safe secures 510(k) FDA clear­ance.

9. May a lim­er­ick a day keep the neu­rol­o­gist away?

10. If not a lim­er­ick, per­haps a few brain teasers. Say the months of the year in alpha­bet­i­cal order. Too easy? Well, try doing so back­wards, in reverse alpha­bet­i­cal order. Five quick brain teasers to flex those Atten­tion and Work­ing Mem­o­ry men­tal mus­cles

11. You have been invit­ed to a fundrais­ing gala at your old col­lege (via Zoom of course) and decide that this black-tie event demands a super white Ital­ian shirt, like the one you bought years ago for your wed­ding. Ready for some quick math? Try this Brain Teas­er: What shirt size you need?

Have a great month of June,

The Sharp­Brains Team

Should heads of state and candidates to high office pass a cognitive/ mental fitness test?

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Shut­ter­stock

Is it fair to ques­tion a pres­i­den­tial candidate’s men­tal fit­ness? (Salon):

“My heart sank as he floun­dered his way through his respons­es, fum­bling with his notes, unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly lost for words. He looked tired and bewil­dered,” Ron Rea­gan, the son of Pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan, wrote of his father’s per­for­mance dur­ing the first 1984 pres­i­den­tial debate.

At the time, there had long been rumors that Rea­gan was suf­fer­ing from cog­ni­tive impair­ment — per­haps Alzheimer’s Dis­ease — and as he strug­gled dur­ing the first debate against his Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­nent, for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Wal­ter Mon­dale, those con­cerns threat­ened his reelec­tion cam­paign. He recov­ered dur­ing the sec­ond debate with a mem­o­rable quip, jok­ing that he would not allow age to become an issue in the cam­paign because “I am not going to exploit, for polit­i­cal pur­pos­es, my oppo­nen­t’s youth and inex­pe­ri­ence.” The audi­ence laughed, the nation moved on… and, a decade lat­er, Rea­gan announced to the world that he had been diag­nosed with Alzheimer’s [Read more…] about Should heads of state and can­di­dates to high office pass a cognitive/ men­tal fit­ness test?

Mindstrong Health raises $100M to transform how we measure and promote mental health

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Mind­strong scores $100M to mon­i­tor well­ness via smart­phone behav­iors (Mobi­Health News):

This morn­ing dig­i­tal men­tal health plat­form Mind­strong scored a whop­ping $100 mil­lion in Series C fund­ing.

While Mind­strong has a his­to­ry of sol­id fund­ing rounds, this amount will more than dou­ble its total fund­ing. In 2017 it got its first $14 mil­lion cash infu­sion. That was fol­lowed by a $15 mil­lion Series B fund­ing round in June of 2018, which got a $31 mil­lion add-on in Jan­u­ary of 2019, bring­ing the company’s total fund­ing to just under $60 mil­lion before this news.

The com­pa­ny was first found­ed in 2014, but it made a splash in 2017 when for­mer NIMH direc­tor Dr. Thomas Insel left his posi­tion at Ver­i­ly to take on the role as pres­i­dent at Mind­strong. Insel is still involved in the com­pa­ny today in an advi­so­ry role…The tech­nol­o­gy also has a dig­i­tal bio­mark­er com­po­nent. This can track a patient’s smart­phone behav­iors. While the start­up will not see what a patient is doing on their phone, it can mon­i­tor how a patient taps, scrolls and types. It can look for indi­ca­tors of stress, depres­sion or oth­er men­tal health fac­tors.

[Read more…] about Mind­strong Health rais­es $100M to trans­form how we mea­sure and pro­mote men­tal health

Brain Teaser: What shirt size you need?

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You have been invit­ed to a fundrais­ing gala at your old col­lege (via Zoom of course) and decide that this black-tie event demands a super white Ital­ian shirt, like the one you bought years ago for your wed­ding.

When you find and brave­ly try the wed­ding shirt on (size 16), your wife notices that the col­lar suf­fo­cates you — you DO need about 1/4″ more space every­where in-between your neck and the col­lar all around your neck.

So you’ll need a new shirt.

What size shirt do you need to buy?  [Read more…] about Brain Teas­er: What shirt size you need?

Kaiser Permanente offers Calm mental fitness app at no cost to millions of members

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Med­i­ta­tion app Calm is now free for Kaiser Per­ma­nen­te’s mil­lions of mem­bers (CNBC):

Kaiser Per­ma­nente is try­ing to give its 12.4 mil­lion mem­bers a lit­tle bit of calm.

Start­ing Tues­day, the health-care provider is allow­ing patients to down­load the Calm med­i­ta­tion app for free as part of a way to help cus­tomers man­age anx­i­ety as they deal with the fall­out from the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic. Calm is the most-pop­u­lar health and fit­ness app on Google-pow­ered devices and No. 2 on the iPhone, accord­ing to App Annie. Paid sub­scrip­tions nor­mal­ly cost $70 a year … Calm was see­ing surg­ing growth even before the coro­n­avirus forced Amer­i­cans to shel­ter in place and led to sky­rock­et­ing unem­ploy­ment. The San Fran­cis­co-based start-up was val­ued by investors last year at $1 bil­lion, two years after being named Apple’s app of the year back in 2017. The app has been down­loaded over 80 mil­lion times.

[Read more…] about Kaiser Per­ma­nente offers Calm men­tal fit­ness app at no cost to mil­lions of mem­bers

Three Ss to reduce the stress of “homeschooling” our kids: Simplify, Structure, Support

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With nation­wide school clo­sures in effect, many par­ents are now mon­i­tor­ing home­school­ing while at the same time try­ing to make a liv­ing in the midst of an eco­nom­ic cri­sis. In this envi­ron­ment of bro­ken rou­tine and uncer­tain­ty, chances are your child is show­ing big feel­ings and chal­leng­ing behav­iors.

In my work as a school psy­chol­o­gist, I’ve been hear­ing from par­ents that despite their best efforts, their chil­dren are strug­gling with meet­ing home­school expec­ta­tions. Kids who [Read more…] about Three Ss to reduce the stress of “home­school­ing” our kids: Sim­pli­fy, Struc­ture, Sup­port