Posts by Alvaro Fernandez
Debate: How and when will the telemedicine surge reach mental healthcare?
Covid-19 Pandemic Drives Patients—and Deal Makers—to Telemedicine (The Wall Street Journal): The coronavirus pandemic has put the once-niche category of telemedicine in the spotlight and is now driving a flurry of deal activity involving virtual health-care providers … Patients have embraced virtual care as a way to stay in touch with doctors for urgent care or…
Read MoreLarge study finds that placebo works as well as vitamin D supplements to prevent depression and improve mood
Large Study Confirms Vitamin D Does Not Reduce Risk of Depression in Adults (Mass General press release): Vitamin D supplementation does not protect against depression in middle-age or older adulthood according results from one of the largest ever studies of its kind … “There was no significant benefit from the supplement for this purpose. It…
Read MoreDebate: Should heads of state and candidates to high office pass a cognitive/ mental fitness test?
Wow, that was quite a discussion over at Facebook groups on Neuroscience, Neuroplasticity, Psychiatry & Clinical Psychology, Singularity and beyond as a response to the question Should heads of state and candidates to high office pass a cognitive/ mental fitness test? Here are (lightly edited, randomly ordered, anonymized) some of the sharpest comments among the 100+…
Read MoreBrain health innovators needs to escape from the “efficiency trap”
Fun to (remotely) talk at the Startup Impact Summit in Hong Kong to discuss the latest on brain health and mental fitness and to highlight a key point: in such a rapidly-and-profoundly-evolving field, we need to prioritize effectiveness over efficiency; otherwise we simply keep doing –faster, cheaper– the wrong things time and again. Think of the…
Read MoreDebate the Future of Mental Health in North America: In ten years, will we see DSM‑6 or Something Much Better (SMB‑1)?
Wow, that was quite a fascinating discussion over at Facebook groups on Neuroscience, Neuroplasticity, Psychiatry & Clinical Psychology, Neuroscience and beyond, in response to our post The way we approach Mental Health today is broken beyond repair. The question is, what comes next, and how fast can we get there? Here are (lightly edited, randomly ordered,…
Read MoreA limerick a day hopefully keeps the neurologist away
– Hat tip to Barbara Arrowsmith-Young Mark Rosenzweig’s classic 1996 paper on neuroplasticity: Psychobiology of plasticity: effects of training and experience on brain and behavior (Behavioural Brain Research): Abstract: Supporting Hebb’s 1949 hypothesis of use-induced plasticity of the nervous system, our group found in the 1960s that training or differential experience induced neurochemical changes in cerebral…
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