Update: Study finds continued birth of new neurons (neurogenesis) well into our 70s

___

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