SharpBrains

“To do nothing is not an option”: The NHS Confederation releases digital mental health whitepaper

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The NHS Con­fed­er­a­tion–the mem­ber­ship organ­i­sa­tion for health­care providers in Eng­land, Wales and North­ern Ire­land– has just released a quite com­pre­hen­site 45-page whitepa­per titled Max­imis­ing the poten­tial of dig­i­tal in men­tal health.

Some of the highlights:

To do noth­ing is not an option. If we don’t make more progress we miss a key oppor­tu­ni­ty to make improve­ments to men­tal health ser­vices such as improv­ing access; pro­vid­ing ear­ly inter­ven­tion and pre­ven­tion at scale; imple­ment­ing new ways of reach­ing peo­ple; and help­ing to meet the demand sup­ply gap; and at the same time open­ing up access so that inequal­i­ties in access to health­care and sup­port for men­tal health are reduced.

[Read more…] about “To do noth­ing is not an option”: The NHS Con­fed­er­a­tion releas­es dig­i­tal men­tal health whitepaper

Time for a universal “exercise prescription” for kids and adults to boost cognition and mental health?

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing this time a range of brain research find­ings, tools and con­tro­ver­sies plus some brain teasers to chal­lenge your (and our) work­ing memory.

#1. Major evi­dence review sup­ports an “exer­cise pre­scrip­tion” for most adults to boost men­tal health

“High­er inten­si­ty phys­i­cal activ­i­ty was asso­ci­at­ed with greater improve­ments” and “Effec­tive­ness of phys­i­cal activ­i­ty inter­ven­tions dimin­ished with longer dura­tion interventions.”
The sweet spot was four or five half-hour effort­ful ses­sions per week. Are you hit­ting it?

#2. (Sep­a­rate) Evi­dence review: Phys­i­cal exer­cise helps boost atten­tion, cog­ni­tive flex­i­bil­i­ty and inhibito­ry con­trol in chil­dren and ado­les­cents with ADHD

Not sur­pris­ing but impor­tant find­ings. Next to research: the type, inten­si­ty, and dura­tion that may help the most.

#3. Read­ing for plea­sure dur­ing child­hood may lead to high­er brain/ cog­ni­tive devel­op­ment and men­tal well-being dur­ing adolescence

Cru­cial­ly, “… read­ing for plea­sure in ear­ly child­hood was linked with bet­ter scores on com­pre­hen­sive cog­ni­tion assess­ments and bet­ter edu­ca­tion­al attain­ment in young ado­les­cence. It was also asso­ci­at­ed with few­er men­tal health prob­lems and less time spent on elec­tron­ic devices … can be ben­e­fi­cial regard­less of socioe­co­nom­ic sta­tus. It may also be help­ful regard­less of the children’s ini­tial intel­li­gence lev­el.” — Long Live Books and Read­ing (and, yes, Exercise)!

#4. Vir­tu­al cog­ni­tive behav­iour­al ther­a­py (CBT) accounts for over 30% of NHS men­tal health treat­ments — up from 10% in 2017

“Ear­ly inter­ven­tion is crit­i­cal in pre­vent­ing a patient’s mild to mod­er­ate symp­toms from wors­en­ing” … (but) online ther­a­py may not suit every­one and that it was still up to health­care pro­fes­sion­als to iden­ti­fy “who may and may not benefit”

#6. Neu­rotech and brain data in con­text: Are “neu­ror­ights” the way to men­tal privacy?

Impor­tant point: “The poten­tial to col­lect brain data more direct­ly, with high­er res­o­lu­tion, and in greater amounts has height­ened wor­ries about men­tal and brain pri­va­cy …(but) We argue that by empha­siz­ing what is dis­tinct about brain pri­va­cy issues, rather than what they share with oth­er data pri­va­cy con­cerns, risks weak­en­ing broad­er efforts to enact more robust pri­va­cy law and policy.”

#7. Hopes and Ques­tions raised by Alzheimer’s drug Leqem­bi (lecanemab)

“Will Leqembi’s pri­ma­ry ben­e­fit — a slight slow­ing of decline in cog­ni­tion and func­tion­ing — make a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence to patients and fam­i­ly mem­bers or will it be dif­fi­cult to dis­cern? … How many old­er adults in their 70s and 80s will be able and will­ing to trav­el to med­ical cen­ters for infu­sions twice a month and have reg­u­lar MRI scans and physi­cian vis­its to mon­i­tor for poten­tial side effects such as brain bleeds or swelling? Even with Medicare cov­er­age, how many peo­ple will be able to afford the suite of med­ical ser­vices required?”

#8. Its mas­sive price tag: $109,000 per patient, per year

“To qual­i­fy for Leqem­bi, patients must under­go a PET scan that looks for amy­loid plaques, the pro­tein clumps that clog the brains of many Alzheimer’s patients. About 1 in 5 patients who took Leqem­bi in the major clin­i­cal test of the drug devel­oped brain hem­or­rhag­ing or swelling, a risk that requires those tak­ing the drug to under­go fre­quent med­ical check­ups and brain scans called MRIs … Out­stand­ing doubts about Leqem­bi and relat­ed drugs have giv­en urgency to efforts to mon­i­tor patient experiences.”
#9. Final­ly, let’s piv­ot into some­thing more fun. Here are a few brain teasers aimed at chal­leng­ing your work­ing mem­o­ry and help­ing get that brain and mind in great shape for the new academic/ life­long learn­ing year. Please give them a try … they are not as easy as they may sound:

 

Say the days of the week in alpha­bet­i­cal order, then back­wards. If too hard, try the 5 work days first.

If you speak a lan­guage oth­er than Eng­lish, do the same in said language.

Say the months of the year in alpha­bet­i­cal order. Too easy? Well, try doing so back­wards, in reverse alpha­bet­i­cal order. (You will prob­a­bly need some pen and paper for this one.)

Find the sum of your date of birth, mm/dd/yyyy. For a tougher brain teas­er, do the same with your best friend’s date of birth (with­out look­ing it up…)

Look around you and, with­in a minute, find three green things that may fit in your pock­ets, and three red objects that are clear­ly too big to fit.

(more brain teasers here, for teens and adults of every age)
Have a great month of September!

Price tag for a questionable Alzheimer’s treatment: $109,000 per patient, per year. Unclear yet: For how many years?

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The real costs of the new Alzheimer’s drug, Leqem­bi — and why tax­pay­ers will foot much of the bill (CBS News):

The first drug pur­port­ing to slow the advance of Alzheimer’s dis­ease is like­ly to cost the U.S. health care sys­tem bil­lions annu­al­ly even as it remains out of reach for many of the low­er-income seniors most like­ly to suf­fer from dementia.

Medicare and Med­ic­aid patients will make up 92% of the mar­ket for lecanemab, accord­ing to Eisai Co., which sells the drug under the brand name Leqem­bi. In addi­tion to the com­pa­ny’s $26,500 annu­al price tag for the drug, treat­ment could cost U.S. tax­pay­ers $82,500 per patient per year, on aver­age, for genet­ic tests and fre­quent brain scans, safe­ty mon­i­tor­ing, and oth­er care, accord­ing to esti­mates from the Insti­tute for Clin­i­cal and Eco­nom­ic Review, or ICER. [Read more…] about Price tag for a ques­tion­able Alzheimer’s treat­ment: $109,000 per patient, per year. Unclear yet: For how many years?

Just-published Apple patent signals aim to measure brain activity using AirPods sensor system

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Apple Invents a next-gen­er­a­tion Air­Pods Sen­sor Sys­tem that could mea­sure Biosig­nals and Elec­tri­cal Activ­i­ty of a User’s brain (Patent­ly Apple):

Today the US Patent & Trade­mark Office pub­lished a patent appli­ca­tion from Apple that relates to a next-gen­er­a­tion of Air­Pods Sen­sor Sys­tem where­in the hous­ing and tips of Air­Pods could include a num­ber of active and ref­er­ence elec­trodes con­fig­ured to mea­sure biosig­nals and elec­tri­cal activ­i­ty of a user’s brain. The biosig­nals mea­sured by Air­Pods could include, but are not lim­it­ed to, an elec­troen­cephalog­ra­phy (EEG), elec­tromyo­g­ra­phy (EMG), elec­troocu­log­ra­phy (EOG) and more. [Read more…] about Just-pub­lished Apple patent sig­nals aim to mea­sure brain activ­i­ty using Air­Pods sen­sor system

Virtual cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) accounts for over 30% of NHS mental health treatments — up from 10% in 2017

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Con­cern as a third of NHS men­tal health treat­ments shift online (The Guardian):

An Observ­er analy­sis of data from pri­vate providers, cross-checked against NHS fig­ures, reveals around one in three men­tal health treat­ments in Eng­land are deliv­ered online, up from one in five in 2019, and one in 10 in 2017. Patients with mild to mod­er­ate depres­sion or anx­i­ety can be referred to app- or web-based, self-guid­ed cog­ni­tive behav­iour­al ther­a­py (CBT) cours­es, instead of tra­di­tion­al face-to-face talk­ing ther­a­pies. [Read more…] about Vir­tu­al cog­ni­tive behav­iour­al ther­a­py (CBT) accounts for over 30% of NHS men­tal health treat­ments — up from 10% in 2017

Should doctors prescribe Leqembi (lecanemab) to women with early Alzheimer’s Disease? The evidence-based answer is probably No

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing this time a range of inter­ven­tions for brain/ cognitive/ men­tal health plus a few brain teasers to test our per­cep­tion and cog­ni­tive skills.

#1. Should doc­tors pre­scribe lecanemab (Leqem­bi) to women? The answer, giv­en avail­able evi­dence, is prob­a­bly No

  • Huge (and most­ly over­looked) red flag regard­ing new­ly approved “anti-Alzheimer’s” drugs: “To put it blunt­ly, if lecanemab doesn’t work in women it would be uneth­i­cal to sup­ply it to women. Recall this cost­ly immunother­a­py comes with sub­stan­tive risks, includ­ing high inci­dence of ARIA and even death.”

#2. Grow­ing con­tro­ver­sy over role of FDA and Medicare in pro­mot­ing anti-amy­loid drugs giv­en lim­it­ed ben­e­fit, high cost, severe side-effects

  • There’s even a peti­tion cir­cu­lat­ing among sci­en­tists and doc­tors stat­ing that “As the FDA pre­pares to deter­mine if it will grant full approval for its wide­spread use, the avail­able data sug­gests lecanemab is inef­fec­tive and may be harm­ful, mak­ing its use and cost unjustifiable.”

#3. How the Arts trans­form our Brains, Bod­ies, and Minds

  • “The arts can trans­form you like noth­ing else.”

#4. Smart­phone-based cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py found to sig­nif­i­cant­ly decrease insom­nia, sub­stan­tial­ly out­per­form­ing sleep education

  • Capa­bil­i­ties > Knowledge

#5. Study shows the pow­er of elec­troen­cephalog­ra­phy and machine learn­ing to help pre­dict response to psy­chother­a­py (or lack there­of) in patients with PTSD

  • “Not only could EEG ML pre­dict treat­ment, but mod­els trained on one ther­a­py could pre­dict the oth­er. Not only could EEG ML pre­dict respon­ders, but it could also iden­ti­fy non-responders.…people for whom nei­ther ther­a­py works.”

#6. The Nation­al Health Ser­vice (NHS) in Eng­land to roll-out nine online cog­ni­tive-behav­iour­al ther­a­pies (CBT) for adults with anx­i­ety or depression

  • “They pro­vide an alter­na­tive way of access­ing sup­port, which may be more con­ve­nient for some, the Nation­al Insti­tute for Health and Care Excel­lence (NICE) says … NICE will look at the evi­dence from their use over the next few years to work out how cost-effec­tive they are.”

#7. Study: Self-guid­ed inter­net-deliv­ered treat­ment can sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce ADHD symp­toms among adults

  • “Adults in the inter­ven­tion group report­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly greater reduc­tions in ADHD symp­toms fol­low­ing treat­ment than con­trol par­tic­i­pants; these dif­fer­ences were main­tained at the 3?month fol­low-up … Fur­ther, no adults in the inter­ven­tion group showed a mean­ing­ful increase in symp­toms from base­line to fol­low-up while this hap­pened for over 19% of adults in the con­trol group.”

Last but not least, a few brain teasers and sci­ence tips for adults of any age:

 

Have a great summer!

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