On cognitive reframing and biases, stress, mental health tech, Aduhelm backlash, Britney Spears, and more

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing this time nine sci­en­tif­ic reports and indus­try devel­op­ments to help pro­mote life­long brain and men­tal health.

#1. To low­er stress lev­els and improve prob­lem-solv­ing, prac­tice cog­ni­tive refram­ing instead of venting

“… vent­ing like­ly doesn’t soothe anger as much as aug­ment it. That’s because encour­ag­ing peo­ple to act out their anger makes them relive it in their bod­ies, strength­en­ing the neur­al path­ways for anger and mak­ing it eas­i­er to get angry the next time around. Stud­ies on vent­ing anger (with­out effec­tive feed­back), whether online or ver­bal­ly, have also found it to be gen­er­al­ly unhelp­ful … To get out of that, you can ask the per­son to step back and help you reframe your expe­ri­ence by ask­ing, “How should I think about this dif­fer­ent­ly?” or “What should I do in this situation?”

#2. Head­space and Gin­ger merge to expand and scale up dig­i­tal men­tal health

“The new com­pa­ny would find it push­ing well beyond its cur­rent mind­ful­ness focus to, “pro­vide the full spec­trum of proven, effec­tive vir­tu­al sup­port – from mind­ful­ness and med­i­ta­tion, to text-based behav­ioral health coach­ing, to video-based ther­a­py and psy­chi­a­try – for all types of patient populations.”

Ambi­tious move!

#3. How to read, under­stand and write great med­ical research

12 good tips for stu­dents and every­one else

#4. Vet­er­ans Affairs won’t cov­er Biogen’s new “Alzheimer’s drug” giv­en con­cerns over safe­ty and lack of evidence

Their inde­pen­dent review con­cludes that “giv­en the lack of evi­dence of a robust and mean­ing­ful clin­i­cal ben­e­fit and the known safe­ty sig­nal, we rec­om­mend against offer­ing this agent to patients with Alzheimer’s demen­tia (mild or oth­er­wise) or mild cog­ni­tive impairment.”

#5. Alzheimer’s & Demen­tia researchers chal­lenge FDA’s approval of Aduhelm giv­en lack of evi­dence for beta-amy­loid as a marker

A strong call to “learn how this reg­u­la­to­ry fail­ure occurred and to ensure that it doesn’t occur again”

#6. Debunk­ing four myths about deci­sion-mak­ing capac­i­ty to keep Brit­ney Spears and oth­ers safe

Address­ing the ongo­ing con­tro­ver­sy about con­ser­va­tor­ships, a USC Pro­fes­sor of Law, Psy­chol­o­gy, and Psy­chi­a­try shares a great arti­cle to debunk these all-too-com­mon myths

#7. Study exam­ines com­mon cog­ni­tive bias­es (have you tried this brain teas­er?) and ways to mit­i­gate them

If you have not encoun­tered the “Lin­da brain teas­er” before, please give it a try! If you have, you’ll enjoy the new paper titled Tver­sky and Kahneman’s Cog­ni­tive Illu­sions: Who Can Solve Them, and Why?

#8. Inte­grat­ing music, move­ment and stroke reha­bil­i­ta­tion, MedRhythms rais­es $25M to devel­op and com­mer­cial­ize dig­i­tal therapeutic

Fas­ci­nat­ing approach to gait training.

#9. Neu­rotech start-up Paradromics rais­es $20M to address brain-relat­ed dis­or­ders via next-gen brain-com­put­er interfaces

Neu­ralink vs. Paradromics vs. non-inva­sive plat­forms — quite a stim­u­lat­ing space to track

Wish­ing you and yours a hap­py and healthy back-to-school and month of September,

The Sharp­Brains Team