Tracking Health and Wellness Applications of Brain Science

If you’re a fruit fly, tease your mind with this optical illusion. Humans welcome too.

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Rotat­ing snake illu­sion. Cred­it: Akiyoshi Kitaoka

Please move your gaze around the image, rest­ing from time to time.

Then, fix your gaze at a point, and see what happens.

You will prob­a­bly first see ‘snakes’ rotat­ing, some clock­wise, oth­ers anti­clock­wise, and then stop. [Read more…] about If you’re a fruit fly, tease your mind with this opti­cal illu­sion. Humans wel­come too.

FDA releases first Artificial Intelligence (AI) regulatory plan to promote responsible digital health innovation

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FDA Releas­es Arti­fi­cial Intelligence/Machine Learn­ing Action Plan (FDA press release):

Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion released the agency’s first Arti­fi­cial Intelligence/Machine Learn­ing (AI/ML)-Based Soft­ware as a Med­ical Device (SaMD) Action Plan. This action plan describes a mul­ti-pronged approach to advance the Agency’s over­sight of AI/ML-based med­ical soft­ware … The AI/ML-Based Soft­ware as a Med­ical Device Action Plan out­lines five actions that the FDA intends to take, including:

  • Fur­ther devel­op­ing the pro­posed reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work, includ­ing through issuance of draft guid­ance on a pre­de­ter­mined change con­trol plan (for software’s learn­ing over time);

[Read more…] about FDA releas­es first Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (AI) reg­u­la­to­ry plan to pro­mote respon­si­ble dig­i­tal health innovation

Study: Wearable sensors and machine learning may well (one day) help detect a broad range of epileptic seizures

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Wear­able Device Clears a First ‘Mile­stone’ in Seizure Detec­tion (Med­scape; requires subscription):

A wrist-worn device that uses machine learn­ing accu­rate­ly detects dif­fer­ent seizure types in find­ings that have the poten­tial to rev­o­lu­tion­ize the man­age­ment of patients with epilepsy.

“We have set a first bench­mark for auto­mat­ic detec­tion of a vari­ety of epilep­tic seizures using wear­able sen­sors and deep-learn­ing algo­rithms. In oth­er words, we have shown for the first time that it’s pos­si­ble to do this,” study inves­ti­ga­tor Jian­bin Tang, MA, Data Sci­ence Project Lead, IBM Research Aus­tralia, Vic­to­ria, told Med­scape Med­ical News. [Read more…] about Study: Wear­able sen­sors and machine learn­ing may well (one day) help detect a broad range of epilep­tic seizures

“Never stop wondering” — Sharon Begley, science journalist, RIP

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We are deeply sad­dened to hear that Sharon Beg­ley, one of the most exem­plary sci­ence jour­nal­ist of our times, died on Sat­ur­day, Jan­u­ary 16th.

She was always full of curios­i­ty, high stan­dards and excel­lent writ­ing about all things sci­ence, with a long­stand­ing inter­est in brain and mind research. May she rest in peace, and may her mind­ful­ness remain with us all. [Read more…] about “Nev­er stop won­der­ing” — Sharon Beg­ley, sci­ence jour­nal­ist, RIP

Can COVID-19 coronavirus “invade” human brain tissue? (Quick answer: evidence so far is mixed)

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Brain scans show low­er part of a COVID-19 patient’s brain stem, post­mortem. Arrows point to light and dark spots sug­gest­ing blood ves­sel dam­age, with­out signs of infec­tion by the coro­n­avirus that caus­es COVID-19. Cred­it: Nation­al Insti­tute of Neu­ro­log­i­cal Dis­or­ders and Stroke, NIH

Tak­ing a Clos­er Look at COVID-19’s Effects on the Brain (NIH Direc­tor’s blog):

While pri­mar­i­ly a res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­ease, COVID-19 can also lead to neu­ro­log­i­cal prob­lems. The first of these symp­toms might be the loss of smell and taste, while some peo­ple also may lat­er bat­tle headaches, debil­i­tat­ing fatigue, and trou­ble think­ing clear­ly, some­times referred to as “brain fog.” All of these symp­toms have researchers won­der­ing how exact­ly the coro­n­avirus that caus­es COVID-19, SARS-CoV­‑2, affects the human brain. [Read more…] about Can COVID-19 coro­n­avirus “invade” human brain tis­sue? (Quick answer: evi­dence so far is mixed)

Neuroimaging, big data and mental health: A survey of the land

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This fig­ure shows how dif­fer­ent brain net­works func­tion togeth­er; the lines mea­sur­ing the strength of com­mu­ni­ca­tion among var­i­ous net­works. By using such dis­plays, we can eval­u­ate what is called the human func­tion­al connectome—and also how men­tal ill­ness is dis­rupt­ed. [Fig­ure cour­tesy of Vince Calhoun]

Men­tal and degen­er­a­tive dis­or­ders are among the most cost­ly and com­mon caus­es of dis­abil­i­ty in soci­ety today. Because the brain is the most com­plex organ in the human body, diag­nos­ing and treat­ing prob­lems when things go wrong pos­es enor­mous chal­lenges. Even before the 1990s was des­ig­nat­ed the Decade of the Brain, the poten­tial of neuroimaging—the tech­nol­o­gy that makes it pos­si­ble to see inside the work­ing brain—was a major focus in [Read more…] about Neu­roimag­ing, big data and men­tal health: A sur­vey of the land