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Time for Sharp­Brains eNewslet­ter, bring­ing you the lat­est in in brain health and men­tal health research, tools and think­ing.

Also, a quick heads-up for those based in the UK: the Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Cen­tre for Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy will host a keynote by Alvaro Fer­nan­dez in Lon­don on Wednes­day, May 30th, titled Why the Future of Brain Enhance­ment & Men­tal Health is Dig­i­tal & Per­va­sive (free; requires reg­is­tra­tion). Oth­er upcom­ing events here.

New research:

• Study finds con­tin­ued birth of new neu­rons (neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis) well into our 70s
• The more hours you sit per day, the small­er your medi­al tem­po­ral lobe (MTL) seems to become, brain scans show
• Study com­bines MRI brain scans with sta­tis­tics to bet­ter pre­dict cog­ni­tive prob­lems after stroke

New tools:

• Med­i­ta­tion app Calm said to be rais­ing $25M to become the “Nike of the mind”
• Mind­strong Health iden­ti­fies dig­i­tal bio­mark­ers of cog­ni­tive func­tion using smart­phone data
• Wear­able brain scan­ners to enable broad­er, eas­i­er, cheap­er access to neu­roimag­ing

New thinking:

• Com­bin­ing brain stim­u­la­tion with cog­ni­tive train­ing to enhance atten­tion and mem­o­ry
• Evi­dence review finds that com­put­er-based cog­ni­tive train­ing can sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve mem­o­ry in patients with mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis (MS)
• Despite grow­ing evi­dence against sup­ple­ments mak­ing brain/ mem­o­ry improve­ment claims, sales keep grow­ing

Final­ly, please Save the Date for the sec­ond edi­tion of the Brain­no­va­tions Pitch Con­test on Decem­ber 5th, 2018. Giv­en the suc­cess of the inau­gur­al event last year (details here), the 2018 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit will host a sec­ond con­test for 12 star­tups to pitch their inno­v­a­tive solu­tions to all Sum­mit par­tic­i­pants and to dis­tin­guished Judges –our very own “Sharp Tank.”

Have a great month of May,

The Sharp­Brains Team

–- Mem­bers of the Brain­no­va­tions Judg­ing Pan­el

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New ‘brain health index’ can pre­dict how well patients will do after stroke (Sci­enceDai­ly):

“A new com­put­er pro­gramme devel­oped by sci­en­tists at the Uni­ver­si­ties of Edin­burgh and Glas­gow can assess whole brain dete­ri­o­ra­tion and help pre­dict cog­ni­tive func­tion after stroke up to ten times more accu­rate­ly than cur­rent meth­ods.

The new approach, pub­lished today in the Inter­na­tion­al Jour­nal of Stroke, can quan­ti­fy vis­i­ble brain injury from cere­bral small ves­sel dis­ease (SVD) and brain atro­phy by Read the rest of this entry »

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Heads-up: the Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Cen­tre for Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy will host a keynote by Alvaro Fer­nan­dez on Wednes­day, May 30th, titled Why the Future of Brain Enhance­ment & Men­tal Health is Dig­i­tal & Per­va­sive.

Descrip­tion:

As seen in patent and invest­ment trends, research find­ings and consumer/patient behav­iors, Men­tal Health and Brain Enhance­ment are rapid­ly evolv­ing in trans­for­ma­tion­al ways which Read the rest of this entry »

Giv­en the suc­cess of the first Brainnova­tions Pitch Con­test last year (details here), the 2018 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit will host a sec­ond Brainnova­tions edi­tion, for 12 select­ed star­tups to pitch their inno­v­a­tive solu­tions to to all Sum­mit par­tic­i­pants and to our dis­tin­guished Judges –our very own “Sharp Tank”:

• Dr. Hag­it Alon, VP Sci­en­tif­ic Affairs at Joy Ven­tures
• Dr. David Barash, Chief Med­ical Offi­cer at the GE Foun­da­tion
• Nichol Brad­ford, Co-Founder and ED of the Trans­for­ma­tive Tech Lab
• John Cam­mack, Angel Investor
• Ariel Garten, Founder and Chief Evan­ge­lism Offi­cer at Inter­aX­on
• Dr. Evian Gor­don, Exec­u­tive Chair­man of Brain Resource
• Dr. Adam Haim, Chief of the Small Busi­ness Inno­va­tion Research (SBIR) and Small Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Trans­fer (STTR) Pro­grams at the Nation­al Insti­tute of Men­tal Health (NIMH)
• Kath­leen Herath, Asso­ciate Vice Pres­i­dent Health & Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty at Nation­wide Insur­ance
• Chris­t­ian Her­nan­dez, Man­ag­ing Part­ner at White Star Cap­i­tal
• Dr. Edward Kli­phuis, Invest­ment Direc­tor at Mer­ck Ven­tures
• Dr. Cori Lath­an, Co-Chair of the World Eco­nom­ic Forum’s Coun­cil on the Future of Human Enhance­ment
• Dr. Manuel López-Figueroa, Ven­ture Part­ner at Bay City Cap­i­tal
• Zack Lynch, Gen­er­al Part­ner at JAZZ Ven­ture Part­ners
• Dr. Eddie Mar­tuc­ci, Co-Founder and CEO of Akili Inter­ac­tive Labs
• Dr. Karen Postal, Pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Clin­i­cal Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy (AACN)
• Yan­nick Roy, Co-Founder of Neu­roTechX

We’ll announce more details by July 2nd, 2018. In the mean­time you can learn more here, here and here.

–-This will be the Brain­no­va­tions Judg­ing Panel…our very own “Sharp Tank”

—– In the study, both (A) Total medi­al tem­po­ral lobe (MTL) and (B) parahip­pocam­pal thick­ness cor­re­lat­ed inverse­ly with hours of sitting/day, con­trol­ling for age. Ref­er­ence: Sid­darth P et al (2018), Seden­tary behav­ior asso­ci­at­ed with reduced medi­al tem­po­ral lobe thick­ness in mid­dle-aged and old­er adults. PLOS ONE 13(4): e0195549.

Sit­ting is bad for your brain — not just your metab­o­lism or heart (UCLA release):

“UCLA researchers recruit­ed 35 peo­ple ages 45 to 75 and asked about their phys­i­cal activ­i­ty lev­els and the aver­age num­ber of hours per day they spent sit­ting over the pre­vi­ous week. Each per­son had a high-res­o­lu­tion MRI scan, which pro­vides a detailed look at the medi­al tem­po­ral lobe, or MTL, a brain region involved in the for­ma­tion of new mem­o­ries.

The researchers found that seden­tary behav­ior is a sig­nif­i­cant pre­dic­tor of thin­ning of the MTL and Read the rest of this entry »