On Awe, Wonder, Biofeedback, CBSM, Virtual Reality, Privacy, Being Wrong, and more

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, this time fea­tur­ing eleven time­ly resources and research find­ings for life­long brain health and men­tal well-being.

#1. “Awe is the feel­ing we expe­ri­ence when encoun­ter­ing vast things that we don’t under­stand. Around the world and in cul­tur­al­ly vary­ing ways, stud­ies show, we expe­ri­ence awe in response to oth­ers’ kind­ness and courage, nature, music, reli­gious or spir­i­tu­al prac­tice, the visu­al and dra­mat­ic arts, and epiphany … It leads us to share, col­lab­o­rate, and won­der. In expe­ri­ences of awe, peo­ple often speak as if they have found their soul.”

Some­times it IS awesome to learn how the sausage was made: How Pixar’s “Soul” met the Sci­ence of Awe

#2. Here are six sug­ges­tions to incor­po­rate awe into dai­ly rou­tines and improve men­tal well-being, based on the new book Awestruck: Linger, Slow down, Appre­ci­ate your sens­es, Unplug, Awe walks, Awe journaling.

#3. Speak­ing of Awe and Won­der, why not take a few min­utes to appre­ci­ate our most pre­cious nat­ur­al resource via these
five brain teasers?

A few won­derful news for many with unmet mental/ brain health needs:

#4. Pre­dic­tion: In just a few years we’ll look back at today and won­der, why did­n’t we all, of all ages, access biofeed­back tools and games designed to mea­sure and retrain heart rate vari­abil­i­ty? Grow­ing research sup­ports Heart Rate Vari­abil­i­ty (HRV) biofeed­back train­ing to low­er stress and anx­i­ety, increase sports performance

#5. Blue Note Ther­a­peu­tics rais­es $26M to help treat can­cer-relat­ed dis­tress via cog­ni­tive behav­ioral stress man­age­ment (CBSM): “Near­ly half of all can­cer patients expe­ri­ence psy­choso­cial dis­tress, anx­i­ety, or depres­sion. If left untreat­ed, these feel­ings can low­er a can­cer sur­vivors’ qual­i­ty of life and may neg­a­tive­ly affect survival.”

#6. Applied­VR rais­es $29M to help make vir­tu­al real­i­ty the stan­dard of care for treat­ing chron­ic pain: “Chron­ic pain is one of the most com­mon med­ical con­di­tions in the world, yet it still is incred­i­bly debil­i­tat­ing to patients, cost­ly to the sys­tem and com­plex to treat. While our mis­sion has always been to demon­strate that VR can be a pow­er­ful anal­gesic in any set­ting, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has cre­at­ed a surge in demand for dig­i­tal med­i­cines like VR that can be deliv­ered safe­ly to patients in their own homes” — Matthew Stoudt, co-founder and CEO of AppliedVR

#7. Hap­pi­fy Health rais­es $73M to deep­en part­ner­ships with phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies and insur­ance pay­ers: “We are also work­ing with five lead­ing phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal part­ners on dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tic solu­tions and four out of the five nation­al pay­ers to help sup­port their mem­bers’ men­tal health and chron­ic ill­ness needs. We look for­ward to reach­ing an even big­ger audi­ence with the sup­port of our new part­ners.” — Tomer Ben-Kiki, cofounder and CEO of Happify

This grow­ing num­ber and range of inno­v­a­tive dig­i­tal health tools demands more and bet­ter research, smarter reg­u­la­tions, and more trans­par­ent pri­va­cy policies:

#8. Con­sumer Reports finds unclear, ques­tion­able pri­va­cy prac­tices and poli­cies among pop­u­lar men­tal health apps. “In gen­er­al, these men­tal health ser­vices act­ed like many oth­er apps you might down­load. For instance, we spot­ted apps shar­ing unique IDs asso­ci­at­ed with indi­vid­ual smart­phones that tech com­pa­nies often use to track what peo­ple do across lots of apps. The infor­ma­tion can be com­bined with oth­er data for tar­get­ed adver­tis­ing. Many apps do that, but should men­tal health apps act the same way? At a min­i­mum, Con­sumer Reports’ pri­va­cy experts think, users should be giv­en a clear­er expla­na­tion of what’s going on.”

#9. Tip for dig­i­tal health start-ups: To nav­i­gate reg­u­la­to­ry gray areas, “engage ear­ly and engage often” with the FDA. Impor­tant advice as “…a grow­ing num­ber of com­pa­nies are find­ing them­selves in a gray area of enforce­ment dis­cre­tion, a term the FDA uses for low­er-risk prod­ucts that meet the def­i­n­i­tion of a med­ical device, but do not require reg­u­la­to­ry sub­mis­sion, review and autho­riza­tion before head­ing to market”

#10. Inno­va­tion in COVID times: Otsu­ka and Click Ther­a­peu­tics announce ful­ly vir­tu­al clin­i­cal tri­al, lever­ag­ing Verily’s Project Base­line: “We do believe that the treat­ment land­scape in men­tal dis­ease is going to evolve in a way where obvi­ous­ly phar­ma­cother­a­py will always play a role, but we do think dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics can play an addi­tion­al role, and to some extent, sub­sti­tute as well as aug­ment phar­ma­co­log­i­cal inter­ven­tion.” — Otsu­ka Chief Med­ical Offi­cer Christoph Koenen

#11. Final­ly, much of the oppor­tu­ni­ty around applied neu­ro­science and neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty relies not on tools but on mind­sets, as dis­cussed in this fan­tas­tic inter­view (To pre­vent “cog­ni­tive entrench­ment,” think like a sci­en­tist and be wrong often):

“JS: You write that being wrong is tied to a more joy­ful life. Why is that?

AG: I had noticed Dan­ny Kah­ne­man [the Nobel prize–winning behav­ioral econ­o­mist] just lights up with joy when he finds out that one of his hypothe­ses is false … In some ways, the joy of being wrong is the free­dom to keep learn­ing. If you can embrace the joy of being wrong, then you get to anchor your iden­ti­ty more in being some­one who’s eager to dis­cov­er new things, than some­one who already knows every­thing or is expect­ed to know everything.”

Wish­ing you a healthy and stim­u­lat­ing month of April,

The Sharp­Brains Team