• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Tracking Health and Wellness Applications of Brain Science

Spanish
sb-logo-with-brain
  • Resources
    • Monthly eNewsletter
    • Solving the Brain Fitness Puzzle
    • The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness
    • How to evaluate brain training claims
    • Resources at a Glance
  • Brain Teasers
    • Top 25 Brain Teasers & Games for Teens and Adults
    • Brain Teasers for each Cognitive Ability
    • More Mind Teasers & Games for Adults of any Age
  • Virtual Summits
    • 2019 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
    • Speaker Roster
    • Brainnovations Pitch Contest
    • 2017 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
    • 2016 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
    • 2015 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
    • 2014 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
  • Report: Pervasive Neurotechnology
  • Report: Digital Brain Health
  • About
    • Mission & Team
    • Endorsements
    • Public Speaking
    • In the News
    • Contact Us

Is Mental Health ready to start transitioning towards measurable brain circuits, away from subjective symptoms?

July 5, 2016 by SharpBrains

mental-healthTo Diag­nose Men­tal Ill­ness, Read the Brain (Sci­en­tif­ic American):

Although sci­en­tists have learned a lot about the brain in the last few decades, approach­es to treat­ing men­tal ill­ness­es have not kept up. As neu­ro­sci­en­tists learn more about brain cir­cuits, Stan­ford psy­chi­a­trist Amit Etkin fore­sees a time when diag­noses will be based on brain scans rather than symp­toms…(Etkin says that) We under­stand behav­ior is essen­tial­ly under­pinned by brain cir­cuits. That is, there are cir­cuits in the brain that deter­mine cer­tain types of behav­iors and cer­tain types of thoughts and feel­ings. That’s prob­a­bly the most use­ful way of orga­niz­ing brain func­tion. If you can start char­ac­ter­iz­ing cir­cuit dis­rup­tions for com­pen­sato­ry symp­toms at an indi­vid­ual sub­ject lev­el and then link that to how you can pro­vide inter­ven­tions, then you can get away com­plete­ly from diag­noses and can inter­vene with brain func­tion in a direct­ed way.

Relat­ed arti­cle: Men­tal Ill­ness – One Treat­ment to Cure Them All, One Net­work to Bind Them? (Brain­Blog­ger):

Imag­ine: A cure all for ALL men­tal ill­ness­es… sounds illog­i­cal, per­haps impos­si­ble, some­thing straight out of fan­ta­sy, no? Well, at the Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit, Mon­i­tor­ing & Enhanc­ing Brain Health in the Per­va­sive Neu­ro­science Era, where pre­sent­ing cut­ting-edge inno­v­a­tive research was the norm, I was lucky to be wit­ness to a tru­ly tan­ta­liz­ing talk by psy­chol­o­gist Dr. Madeleine Good­kind that will like­ly change your per­spec­tive. As Dr. Good­kind explains, even with­in one men­tal ill­ness, there are vast­ly diverse com­bi­na­tions of symp­toms and respons­es to treat­ment, as well as comor­bity (i.e. shared symp­toms) with many oth­er disorders…So instead of focus­ing on symp­toms, Dr. Good­kind and cowork­ers looked to the source of the riv­er and iden­ti­fied “…three regions of the brain that com­mon­ly have decreased vol­umes across psy­chi­atric ill­ness­es, the left and right bilat­er­al ante­ri­or insu­la, and the dor­sal ante­ri­or cin­gu­late cortex…there are under­ly­ing brain deficits that may be present that we can address first to make treat­ment more effective.”

To Learn more:

  • Q: What do peo­ple with schiz­o­phre­nia, bipo­lar dis­or­der, depres­sion, addic­tion, obses­sive-com­pul­sive dis­or­der, and anx­i­ety have in com­mon? A: A brain with sim­i­lar gray-mat­ter loss
  • Slid­edeck by Dr. Good­kind and others:

How to mea­sure and improve brain-based out­comes that mat­ter in health care from Sharp­Brains

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Email
  • Print
  • More
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Pock­et

Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: brain, brain circuits, brain deficits, brain-function, brain-scans, Mental-Health, mental-illness, mind, psychiatrist, psychiatry

Primary Sidebar

Top Articles on Brain Health and Neuroplasticity

  1. Can you grow your hippocampus? Yes. Here’s how, and why it matters
  2. How learning changes your brain
  3. To harness neuroplasticity, start with enthusiasm
  4. Three ways to protect your mental health during –and after– COVID-19
  5. Why you turn down the radio when you're lost
  6. Solving the Brain Fitness Puzzle Is the Key to Self-Empowered Aging
  7. Ten neu­rotech­nolo­gies about to trans­form brain enhance­ment & health
  8. Five reasons the future of brain enhancement is digital, pervasive and (hopefully) bright
  9. What Educators and Parents Should Know About Neuroplasticity and Dance
  10. The Ten Habits of Highly Effective Brains
  11. Six tips to build resilience and prevent brain-damaging stress
  12. Can brain training work? Yes, if it meets these 5 conditions
  13. What are cognitive abilities and how to boost them?
  14. Eight Tips To Remember What You Read
  15. Twenty Must-Know Facts to Harness Neuroplasticity and Improve Brain Health

Top 10 Brain Teasers and Illusions

  1. You think you know the colors? Try the Stroop Test
  2. Check out this brief attention experiment
  3. Test your stress level
  4. Guess: Are there more brain connections or leaves in the Amazon?
  5. Quick brain teasers to flex two key men­tal mus­cles
  6. Count the Fs in this sentence
  7. Can you iden­tify Apple’s logo?
  8. Ten classic optical illu­sions to trick your mind
  9. What do you see?
  10. Fun Mental Rotation challenge
  • Check our Top 25 Brain Teasers, Games and Illusions

Join 12,619 readers exploring, at no cost, the latest in neuroplasticity and brain health.

By subscribing you agree to receive our free, monthly eNewsletter. We don't rent or sell emails collected, and you may unsubscribe at any time.

IMPORTANT: Please check your inbox or spam folder in a couple minutes and confirm your subscription.

Get In Touch!

Contact Us

660 4th Street, Suite 205,
San Francisco, CA 94107 USA

About Us

SharpBrains is an independent market research firm tracking health and performance applications of brain science. We prepare general and tailored market reports, publish consumer guides, produce an annual global and virtual conference, and provide strategic advisory services.

© 2022 SharpBrains. All Rights Reserved - Privacy Policy