The latest on brain health, neurotechnology, artificial intelligence and “never stop wondering”

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing a life well lived, the lat­est news on brain health and inno­va­tion, and some brain teasers in hon­or of Inter­na­tion­al Brain Teas­er Month.

#1. Thank you, Sharon. We won’t. “Nev­er stop won­der­ing” — Sharon Beg­ley, sci­ence jour­nal­ist, RIP

#2. Write injuries in sand, kind­ness­es in ____________.
Milk the cow, but do not pull off the ___________.

Enjoy these 5 US and 7 inter­na­tion­al proverbs to test your cog­ni­tive skills.

#3. Beware the snakes as you tease your mind with this opti­cal illusion.

#4. The blood-brain bar­ri­er is hope­ful­ly hard at work: Can COVID-19 coro­n­avirus “invade” human brain tis­sue? (Quick answer: evi­dence so far is mixed)

#5. Yes, a bit circular…but that’s the point: To man­age stress, sleep bet­ter. To sleep bet­ter, keep a good rou­tine and man­age stress.

#6. Excel­lent arti­cle for those inter­est­ed in state-of-the-art neu­rotech. The Promise of Big Data Imag­ing for Men­tal Health

#7. We’d much rather see the NIH or a fit­ness or nutri­tion com­pa­ny spon­sor such a promis­ing study, rather than a phar­ma com­pa­ny, but this is great news any­way: The new fron­tier in neu­rocog­ni­tive mon­i­tor­ing and demen­tia screen­ing: the Apple Watch

#8. “I am encour­aged by Cognito’s inno­v­a­tive approach,” said Allan Lev­ey, M.D., Ph.D., Pro­fes­sor and Chair­man of the Depart­ment of Neu­rol­o­gy at Emory Uni­ver­si­ty and Direc­tor of the Emory Goizue­ta Alzheimer’s Dis­ease Research Cen­ter. “This strat­e­gy trans­lat­ing recent advances in non-inva­sive mod­u­la­tion of brain activ­i­ty with sen­so­ry stim­u­la­tion with light and sound has the poten­tial to be an urgent­ly need­ed safe, non-inva­sive, and effec­tive treat­ment for mil­lions of indi­vid­u­als with Alzheimer’s dis­ease.” Neu­rostim­u­la­tion device Gam­maSense by Cog­ni­to Ther­a­peu­tics secures FDA Break­through Device Des­ig­na­tion to explore Alzheimer’s Dis­ease applications

#9. This can help a ton of peo­ple, giv­en that “Cur­rent­ly, video EEG is the gold stan­dard for seizure detec­tion, but it requires a hos­pi­tal stay, is often cost­ly, and can be stig­ma­tiz­ing.” Study: Wear­able sen­sors and machine learn­ing may well (one day) help detect a broad range of epilep­tic seizures

#10. “While 66% accu­ra­cy may not sound high, it is an improve­ment on cur­rent accu­ra­cy lev­els of diag­no­sis by human clin­i­cians, par­tic­u­lar­ly gen­er­al physi­cians who aren’t trained in psy­chi­a­try.” Machine learn­ing study finds stan­dard­ized brain scan bio­mark­er to detect depres­sion with 66% accuracy

#11. FDA releas­es first Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (AI) reg­u­la­to­ry plan to pro­mote respon­si­ble dig­i­tal health inno­va­tion. Two of the pri­or­i­ties are the “issuance of draft guid­ance on a pre­de­ter­mined change con­trol plan (for software’s learn­ing over time)” and “Devel­op­ing meth­ods to eval­u­ate and improve machine learn­ing algo­rithms.” Both are cru­cial giv­en that data-dri­ven inno­va­tion is in flux by def­i­n­i­tion, unlike drug-dri­ven innovation.

#12. The law of aver­ages sug­gests 2021 will be a good year … Here’s a toast to a Healthy, Hap­py & Mean­ing­ful New Year.

Best regards,

The Sharp­Brains Team

 

About SharpBrains

SHARPBRAINS is an independent think-tank and consulting firm providing services at the frontier of applied neuroscience, health, leadership and innovation.
SHARPBRAINS es un think-tank y consultoría independiente proporcionando servicios para la neurociencia aplicada, salud, liderazgo e innovación.

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