SharpBrains

Pear Therapeutics loses 97% of its market capitalization since 2021, explores strategic alternatives

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Source: Google Finance

Pear Ther­a­peu­tics explor­ing sale, oth­er ‘strate­gic alter­na­tives’ (Mobi­Health News):

Pre­scrip­tion dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics com­pa­ny Pear Ther­a­peu­tics is explor­ing “strate­gic alter­na­tives,” includ­ing a pos­si­ble com­pa­ny sale, merg­er or acquisition.

In a press release, the com­pa­ny said it hired a finan­cial advi­sor to look into actions that could “max­i­mize share­hold­er val­ue.” That includes a poten­tial sale, M&A, divesti­ture of assets, licens­ing or oth­er strate­gic trans­ac­tions. It may also seek addi­tion­al financ­ing. [Read more…] about Pear Ther­a­peu­tics los­es 97% of its mar­ket cap­i­tal­iza­tion since 2021, explores strate­gic alternatives

Ten resources, brain teasers and illusions to celebrate Brain Awareness Week 2023

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We invite you to cel­e­brate Brain Aware­ness Week (March 13–19th, 2023) by learn­ing more about that key yet often-over­looked organ and by putting it to good use via some fun brain teasers and illusions 🙂

  1. Can you con­nect these pairs of words?
  2. Try these quick teasers to chal­lenge your work­ing memory
  3. Three clas­sic opti­cal illu­sions, explained
  4. Test your cog­ni­tive skills with these proverbs
  5. Math teas­er: Will you fin­ish your the­sis on time?
  6. What do you see? And, can you unsee it?
  7. Study exam­ines com­mon cog­ni­tive bias­es such as this one and ways to mit­i­gate them

About Brain Awareness Week:

Every March, Brain Aware­ness Week (BAW) unites the efforts of part­ner orga­ni­za­tions world­wide in a cel­e­bra­tion of the brain for peo­ple of all ages. Activ­i­ties are lim­it­ed only by the orga­niz­ers’ imag­i­na­tions and include open days at neu­ro­science labs; exhi­bi­tions about the brain; lec­tures on brain-relat­ed top­ics; social media cam­paigns; dis­plays at libraries and com­mu­ni­ty cen­ters; class­room work­shops; and more. This year BAW takes place March 13–19th, 2023.

  1. Vis­it the Cal­en­dar of Events Here
  2. Try many games, rid­dles, and puz­zles Here
  3. Explore use­ful fact­sheets Here

CMS: anti-amyloid drug Leqembi (lecanemab) doesn’t meet the “reasonable and necessary” standard required for wider Medicare coverage

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CMS Sticks to Sharply Lim­it­ed Cov­er­age of New Alzheimer’s Drug, Leqem­bi (Man­aged Health­care Executive):

For now, CMS (Note: Cen­ters for Medicare & Med­ic­aid Ser­vices) is stick­ing to the cov­er­age deci­sion it made for Aduhelm (adu­canum­ab) and apply­ing it Leqem­bi (lecanemab). The deci­sion lim­its Medicare cov­er­age of the two Alzheimer disease’s drugs to Medicare ben­e­fi­cia­ries who have enrolled in clin­i­cal tri­als of the drugs

The deci­sion, which was announced in a press release yes­ter­day, was denounced in strong lan­guage by the Alzheimer’s Asso­ci­a­tion. [Read more…] about CMS: anti-amy­loid drug Leqem­bi (lecanemab) doesn’t meet the “rea­son­able and nec­es­sary” stan­dard required for wider Medicare coverage

BrainHealth Week starts today! Plus: dancing, personalized mental health, brain stimulation and more

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains e‑newsletter, annouc­ing the kick-off of Brain­Health Week and fea­tur­ing some stim­u­lat­ing resources and teasers.

#1. Brain­Health Week (Feb­ru­ary 20–24th) starts today:

Explore many fun events includ­ing a dai­ly text chal­lenge, a talk with the always great Dr. Tom Insel, and more!

#2. With­out Brain Health, you do not have Health

Impor­tant arti­cle giv­en that “It typ­i­cal­ly takes twen­ty to forty years or more for sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­er­ies to mean­ing­ful­ly ben­e­fit human life. We can­not wait that long.” — Wise words!

#3. Sin Salud Cere­bral, Ust­ed no tiene Salud –same arti­cle, in Span­ish, for extra men­tal stim­u­la­tion and for sharing 🙂

“En los últi­mos diez años, los neu­ro­ci­en­tifi­cos hemos des­cu­bier­to mucho acer­ca de cómo fun­ciona el cere­bro, cómo mejo­rar la salud y el fun­cionamien­to del cere­bro y la mente a lo largo de la vida, y cómo esto con­tribuye a nues­tra salud y bien­es­tar en gen­er­al. Únase a nosotros y asegúrese de que los mejores años de su cere­bro están aún por venir, recor­dan­do que: Sin salud cere­bral, ust­ed no tiene salud.”

#4. Ball­room danc­ing can reduce aging-relat­ed brain atro­phy in the hip­pocam­pus (and, more than tread­mill walking!)

“(Danc­ing) gen­er­at­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly greater improve­ments than tread­mill walk­ing on one mea­sure of exec­u­tive func­tion and on pro­cess­ing speed, which is the time it takes to respond to or process infor­ma­tion. Com­pared with walk­ing, danc­ing was also asso­ci­at­ed with reduced brain atro­phy in the hip­pocam­pus – a brain region that is key to mem­o­ry func­tion­ing and is par­tic­u­lar­ly affect­ed by Alzheimer’s dis­ease … We think that social danc­ing may be more ben­e­fi­cial than walk­ing because it is phys­i­cal­ly, social­ly and cog­ni­tive­ly demand­ing – and there­fore strength­ens a wide net­work of brain regions.”

#5. Alto Neu­ro­science rais­es $60M (equi­ty + cred­it) to help fix the “tri­al and error” approach to psy­chi­atric medication

“To do so, Alto is pair­ing a trove of data on EEG activ­i­ty, genet­ics, behav­ioral task mea­sure­ments and oth­er fac­tors to see which of its drugs fits best with patients who have depres­sion, post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der and oth­er men­tal health con­di­tions. The company’s arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence plat­form homes in on three buck­ets: cog­ni­tion, emo­tion and sleep.”

#6. Voice bio­mark­er plat­form Sonde Health rais­es $19.25M to spread access to men­tal health mon­i­tor­ing and beyond

“GN Group will inte­grate Sonde’s Men­tal Fit­ness vocal bio­mark­er into its hear­ing prod­ucts. The com­pa­ny is already work­ing with Sonde to devel­op an MCI vocal bio­mark­er. Qual­comm, which has already inte­grat­ed Sonde’s vocal bio­mark­ers into its mobile device chipsets, has extend­ed the rela­tion­ship to include its wear­able chipsets.”

#7. The Euro­pean Soci­ety for Brain Stim­u­la­tion oppos­es EU reclas­si­fi­ca­tion of TMS and tDCS, claim­ing a flawed safe­ty assessment

“To put this into per­spec­tive, the like­li­hood of a seizure from rTMS (0.003%) is low­er than that asso­ci­at­ed with the use of anti­de­pres­sants and antipsy­chotics (0.1–1, 5%) … More­over, when such seizures occur they do so most­ly out­side the clinician’s office, by con­trast with rTMS (Per­era et al., 2016). For low inten­si­ty tDCS, tACS, tRNS seizure risk is com­plete­ly absent … As an organ­i­sa­tion and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of NIBS clin­i­cians and pro­fes­sion­als from across Europe, we, the ESBS, there­fore dis­agree with this EU deci­sion and in par­tic­u­lar with the fac­tu­al­ly incor­rect jus­ti­fi­ca­tions of that deci­sion to reclas­si­fy TMS and TES as inva­sive technologies”

Final­ly, a cou­ple of brain teasers to help you test your men­tal rota­tion cog­ni­tive skills:

#8. Can you read a map?

#9. Brain teas­er to stim­u­late your men­tal imagery, spa­tial rota­tion … and appetite

Have a great Brain­Health Week!

Alto Neuroscience raises $60M (equity + credit) to help fix the “trial and error” approach to psychiatric medication

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Alto Neu­ro­science bags $25M for four Phase II drugs (End­points News):

Anoth­er $25 mil­lion is flow­ing the way of a Cal­i­for­nia biotech attempt­ing to fix the “tri­al and error” sys­tem in neu­ro­science drug R&D.

Alto Neu­ro­science picked up the cap­i­tal from Alpha Wave Ven­tures via an exten­sion to its Series B, bring­ing total equi­ty raised to $100 mil­lion since the startup’s 2019 found­ing. [Read more…] about Alto Neu­ro­science rais­es $60M (equi­ty + cred­it) to help fix the “tri­al and error” approach to psy­chi­atric medication

The European Society for Brain Stimulation opposes EU reclassification of TMS and tDCS, claiming a flawed safety assessment

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Man­i­festo: Oppo­si­tion to EU Reclas­si­fi­ca­tion of TMS and tDCS equip­ment to Class III devices based on flawed evi­dence (Euro­pean Soci­ety for Brain Stimulation):

It has recent­ly come to our atten­tion that the EU has reclas­si­fied the NIBS equip­ments includ­ing rTMS and tDCS, as Class III devices, the cat­e­go­ry of high­est risk, sim­i­lar to inva­sive treat­ments, such as deep-brain stim­u­la­tion implants. This reclas­si­fi­ca­tion has a major impact on our field, not only for man­u­fac­tur­ers, but also for researchers, clin­i­cians and patients and we judge this reclas­si­fi­ca­tion a mis­take. First, the evi­den­tial basis for this change is a flawed assess­ment of the safe­ty lit­er­a­ture. Sec­ond, the con­sul­ta­tion process has occurred with­out input from spe­cial­ists or stake­hold­ers pro­fes­sion­al­ly active in the field of NIBS. Nei­ther the ESBS nor Nation­al Soci­eties of Brain Stim­u­la­tion nor indi­vid­ual experts with­in the Euro­pean NIBS com­mu­ni­ty were con­sult­ed on this change. [Read more…] about The Euro­pean Soci­ety for Brain Stim­u­la­tion oppos­es EU reclas­si­fi­ca­tion of TMS and tDCS, claim­ing a flawed safe­ty assessment