May e‑newsletter: MIT Solve launches Brain Health Challenge, asking “How can every person improve their brain health and mental resilience?”

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Time for Sharp­Brains’ May e‑newsletter, high­light­ing what’s new in brain health and men­tal per­for­mance, and fea­tur­ing a very rel­e­vant MIT ini­tia­tive and a thought-pro­vok­ing study on the “Cog­ni­tive Divide.”

New thinking

• MIT Solve launch­es Brain Health Chal­lenge: How can every per­son improve their brain health and men­tal resilience?
• Men­tal Health Inno­va­tion and Dr. Tom Insel: from the NIMH to Google/ Ver­i­ly Life Sci­ences to Start­up Mindstrong
• Five rea­sons the future of brain enhance­ment is dig­i­tal, per­va­sive and (hope­ful­ly) bright (relat­ed slides here)
• Eight research teams work­ing with DARPA to dis­cov­er best ways to acti­vate neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and accel­er­ate learning
• Researchers pro­pose four “neu­ror­ights” to har­ness neu­rotech­nol­o­gy for good: cog­ni­tive lib­er­ty, men­tal pri­va­cy, men­tal integri­ty, and psy­cho­log­i­cal continuity

New research

• Is moder­ni­ty lead­ing to a grow­ing Cog­ni­tive Divide?
• Phys­i­cal­ly-active video games (‘exergames’) boost cog­ni­tion more than phys­i­cal activ­i­ty alone
• Com­mon med­ica­tion treat­ments for PTSD can increase the risk of devel­op­ing dementia
• Study iden­ti­fies brain cir­cuits enabling four-year-olds to “put them­selves in oth­er people’s shoes”

New tools

• Want a music sys­tem that lifts you up when you’re feel­ing down? Meet this audio head­set with bio-sig­nal sen­sors (Neu­roSky patent)
• Eval­u­at­ing neur­al respons­es via EEG brain data in vir­tu­al real­i­ty envi­ron­ments (Nielsen patent)
• Con­nect­ing car­di­o­log­i­cal and neu­ro­log­i­cal health (Medtron­ic patent)
• Start-up Aira rais­es $12M, show­ing the way for cog­ni­tive sci­ence and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) to improve the lives of blind and low vision individuals

Have a great month of June and, for those based in the US, a great Memo­r­i­al Day weekend,

The Sharp­Brains Team