SharpBrains Monthly eNewsletter

On mental fitness beliefs, lifestyles and new tools like apps, digital therapeutics, virtual reality, “brain age gaps” and more

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing time­ly brain & men­tal health news and a fun cou­ple of math brain teasers.

#1. Study on the “ABCs of Men­tal Health” finds that sim­ply believ­ing you can improve men­tal well­be­ing helps actu­al­ly improve it

Beliefs mat­ter.

#2. “Dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics” vs. “Men­tal health apps”: A grow­ing debate on stan­dards, reg­u­la­tion and efficacy

Def­i­n­i­tions matter.

#3. How ’sleep­ing on it’ can help the pre­frontal cor­tex reg­u­late emo­tion­al respons­es, mak­ing us feel bet­ter in the morning

Sleep mat­ters.

#4. NICE in the UK issues rec­om­men­da­tion for Sleepio app, the dig­i­tal cog­ni­tive behav­iour­al ther­a­py for insom­nia by Big Health

Inno­va­tion mat­ters: “At a price of £45 per per­son, Sleepio is cost sav­ing com­pared with usu­al treat­ment in pri­ma­ry care. This is based on an analy­sis of pri­ma­ry care resource use data before and after Sleepio was intro­duced in 9 GP prac­tices. Health­care costs were low­er at 1 year, most­ly because of few­er GP appoint­ments and sleep­ing pills prescribed.”

#5. New book pro­vides prac­ti­cal guid­ance for women (and men) to rebal­ance our lifestyles and build Cog­ni­tive Reserve

Lifestyle mat­ters: “The more com­plex our lives are, the more we need sim­ple things that can ground us and help us to be more resilient – to rebal­ance and rebal­ance and rebal­ance again. Build­ing the men­tal mus­cles to find bal­ance when one gets off bal­ance is a crit­i­cal skill thrive and to build cog­ni­tive reserve in our fast-chang­ing times. As our month­ly gath­er­ings showed us over the years, prac­tic­ing rebal­ance in good com­pa­ny not only rein­forces neur­al path­ways and capa­bil­i­ties but also strength­ens the bonds of trust and con­fi­dence that are invalu­able to build a healthy envi­ron­ment to thrive in.”

#6. Study: Auto­mat­ed VR psy­chother­a­py can help reduce anx­i­ety and dis­tress, espe­cial­ly among those with psy­chosis and severe agoraphobia

One of the ben­e­fits of VR is that patients know they are in a sim­u­la­tion, which enables “psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­tance from prob­lem­at­ic reac­tions,” the study authors wrote. “The process of find­ing the best uses and imple­men­ta­tion meth­ods of this immer­sive tech­nol­o­gy at scale in men­tal health is only beginning.”

#7. Fund­ing for dig­i­tal health start-ups, espe­cial­ly in men­tal health, fall sub­stan­tial­ly in Q1’22

“While all tech sec­tors received small­er fund­ing totals than the pre­vi­ous quar­ter, dig­i­tal health plunged much fur­ther than oth­ers did … investor inter­est in men­tal health tech wavered as the mar­ket and pub­lic com­pa­nies like Talk­space and Cere­bral come under scrutiny.”

#8. Deep learn­ing mod­el built on neu­roimag­ing data iden­ti­fies “Brain Age Gaps” as mark­ers of Alzheimer’s dis­ease (AD)

“The main find­ing of our study is that we could indeed find evi­dence that high brain age gap is behav­ing as an accel­er­at­ed brain aging bio­mark­er.” — Dr. David Jones, neu­rol­o­gist at Mayo Clinic

Final­ly, a cou­ple fun brain teasers to help you flex your math/ cog­ni­tive men­tal muscles:

#9. Will you fin­ish your the­sis on time?

#10. Math brain teas­er requir­ing no math — just per­cep­tion and cognition

 

Wish­ing you and yours a healthy and stim­u­lat­ing June!

News on how the brain changes over time, how to clear foggy brains, how to multitask (or not), and more

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing time­ly brain & men­tal health news and a fun brain teas­er to test the lim­its of multi-tasking.

#1. Col­lab­o­ra­tive neu­roimag­ing ini­tia­tive Brain­Chart helps chart how brains change across the lifes­pan. Among the many fas­ci­nat­ing findings:

“The vol­ume of grey mat­ter (brain cells) increas­es rapid­ly from mid-ges­ta­tion onwards, peak­ing just before we are six years old. It then begins to decrease slowly.”
“The vol­ume of white mat­ter (brain con­nec­tions) also increased rapid­ly from mid-ges­ta­tion through ear­ly child­hood and peaks just before we are 29 years old.”
“The decline in white mat­ter vol­ume begins to accel­er­ate after 50 years.”

#2. Five ways to clear fog­gy brains and improve cog­ni­tive well-being

“Become more inten­tion­al about con­sum­ing news … news­pa­pers, TV news pro­grams, and many social media sites make their mon­ey by grab­bing your attention—and noth­ing grabs atten­tion bet­ter than neg­a­tive news. But repeat­ed expo­sure to crises wreaks hav­oc with our well-being and can lead to bad deci­sion making.”

#3. As announced in our pre­vi­ous e‑newsletter, the Cen­ter for Brain­Health at UT-Dal­las host­ed a talk titled Nav­i­gat­ing the Brain Health Mar­ket with Álvaro Fer­nán­dez Ibáñez on April 21st. We had over a thou­sand par­tic­i­pants, hun­dreds of com­ments and a superb Q&A at the end — you can enjoy the full ses­sion record­ing HERE, over at YouTube.

#4. Map­ping ‘psy­che­del­ic trips’ in the brain to bet­ter direct their ther­a­peu­tic effects

“Our study shows that it’s pos­si­ble to map the diverse and wild­ly sub­jec­tive psy­che­del­ic expe­ri­ences to spe­cif­ic regions in the brain. These insights may lead to new ways to com­bine exist­ing or yet to be dis­cov­ered com­pounds to pro­duce desired treat­ment effects for a range of psy­chi­atric conditions.”

#5. Altoi­da rais­es fur­ther $14 mil­lion to “democ­ra­tize dig­i­tal cog­ni­tive assess­ment at scale” via aug­ment­ed real­i­ty (AR) and AI

“Through an app down­loaded to a patient’s own smart­phone or tablet, Altoida’s tech first offers up a 10-minute test. A vari­ety of Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty (AR)-powered exer­cis­es mea­sure 11 areas of the brain that have been linked to Alzheimer’s. The video-game-like activ­i­ties ask users to hide and relo­cate vir­tu­al objects around the room, sim­u­late a fire evac­u­a­tion and search for vir­tu­al items while a sound con­tin­u­ous­ly plays .. The result­ing report high­lights symp­toms of cog­ni­tive decline—such as hand and gait errors, eye track­ing, pupil dila­tion and more—and pro­vides a score of the like­li­hood that they’ll devel­op Alzheimer’s with­in the next year.”

#6. Geisinger and Eisai to test real-world valid­i­ty of AI-pow­ered Pas­sive Dig­i­tal Mark­er (PDM) in detect­ing ear­ly cog­ni­tive impair­ment and dementia

“As an imple­men­ta­tion sci­en­tist, it is always excit­ing to have oth­er sci­en­tists eval­u­ate the repro­ducibil­i­ty of the per­for­mance of our pas­sive dig­i­tal mark­er in very dif­fer­ent pop­u­la­tions,” said Malaz Bous­tani, M.D., Richard M. Fair­banks Pro­fes­sor of Aging Research at Indi­ana Uni­ver­si­ty. “Repro­ducibil­i­ty is the cor­ner­stone of sci­en­tif­ic progress.”

#7. Debate: Will dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics gain the required lev­els of aware­ness, adop­tion, reim­burse­ment and ful­fill­ment to become sustainable?

“There’s still a lot of foun­da­tion­al work that needs to be done,” said Maya Desai, direc­tor of life sci­ences for Guide­house. “There’s a lot of behav­ioral change that needs to hap­pen across the stake­hold­ers and their mind­sets to think about dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics as a cat­e­go­ry of its own.”

#8. And, yes, here’s the quick brain teas­er to test the lim­its of multitasking

 

Wish­ing you and yours a healthy and stim­u­lat­ing May … Sum­mer is Coming.

 

The Sharp­Brains Team

From “Eminence-based” to Evidence-based cognitive & mental healthcare: Time for quality and accountability

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing time­ly brain & men­tal health news, two excel­lent new books and a few fun brain teasers.

#1. From “Emi­nence-based” to Evi­dence-based men­tal health­care: Time to focus on qual­i­ty and accountability

“The real chal­lenge is not find­ing a ther­a­pist, it’s find­ing a ther­a­pist who knows how to pro­vide the treat­ments that work. In the ear­ly 2000s, Myr­na Weiss­man was try­ing to under­stand why so few ther­a­pists use sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly based treat­ments. She found that over 60 per­cent of pro­fes­sion­al schools of psy­chol­o­gy and master’s lev­el social work pro­grams did not include any super­vised train­ing for any sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly based ther­a­py … In con­trast to evi­dence-based care, I call this “emi­nence-based care.” — Dr. Thomas Insel in his excel­lent new book

#2. Anoth­er great new book to cel­e­brate Brain Aware­ness Week 2022

“Spain played a unique role in Cajal’s discoveries—that is, in the pro­gres­sion of neu­ro­science. The coun­try was not a hotbed of sci­en­tif­ic research. Lack­ing men­tors, Cajal near­ly aban­doned his efforts. But work­ing inde­pen­dent­ly may have forged his auton­o­my and freed him from the influ­ence of tra­di­tion­al the­o­ries. He also longed to dis­prove the stereo­types about Spain. “One could admit that Spain pro­duces some genius artist, such as a long-haired poet or ges­tic­u­lat­ing dancer of either sex,” Cajal lat­er wrote, “but the idea that a true man of sci­ence would emerge from there was con­sid­ered absurd.” — Fas­ci­nat­ing insights into the “father of mod­ern neuroscience”

#3. UT-Dal­las Brain­Health presents vir­tu­al talks with Alvaro Fer­nan­dez and San­jay Gup­ta next month (April 21th and 26th; both 8:00 – 9:00 PM EDT/ Mia­mi time)

We believe some of you may be interested 🙂

#4. Cana­di­an study finds causal link between time play­ing videogames at age 12 and ADHD symp­toms at age 13

“After con­trol­ling for sex, socioe­co­nom­ic sta­tus, and ADHD symp­toms at age 12, the week­ly amount video game play report­ed at age 12 pre­dict­ed high­er lev­els of self-report­ed ADHD symp­toms at age 13 … The mag­ni­tude of the effect was not large, but it was sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant. In con­trast, high­er lev­els of ADHD symp­toms at age 12 did not pre­dict an increase in video game play one year later.”

#5. From for­est bathing to urban parks: How nature helps pro­tect our well-being dur­ing a pandemic

“Whether we gar­den, have a view of nature out our win­dow, vis­it near­by parks, or even just watch a nature video, we can help our­selves deal with the stress­es and strains of COVID iso­la­tion by giv­ing our­selves and our kids a dose of “Vit­a­min N.”

#6. A con­ver­sa­tion at the fron­tier of dig­i­tal health inno­va­tion, FDA reg­u­la­tions, and cog­ni­tive health

Good to see rec­og­nized the need for “reim­burse­ment inno­va­tion” for emerg­ing dig­i­tal bio­mark­ers & ther­a­peu­tics — the FDA does have both sticks and car­rots to leverage

#7. New DARPA ini­tia­tive aims to har­ness cog­ni­tive sci­ence, sen­sors and machine learn­ing to detect ear­ly brain signs of depres­sion, anx­i­ety, and sui­ci­dal ideation

“NEAT is a proof-of-con­cept effort attempt­ing to devel­op a new tool for men­tal and behav­ioral health screen­ing that moves us beyond his­tor­i­cal and cur­rent meth­ods of ques­tions and con­scious­ly fil­tered respons­es … If suc­cess­ful, NEAT will not only sig­nif­i­cant­ly aug­ment behav­ioral health screen­ing, but it could also serve as a new way to assess ulti­mate treat­ment effi­ca­cy, since patients will often tell their clin­i­cians what they think the clin­i­cian wants to hear rather than how they are tru­ly feel­ing.” — Greg Witkop, pro­gram man­ag­er in DARPA’s Defense Sci­ences Office

#8. Sep­a­rat­ing brain-healthy wheat from chaff is becom­ing more urgent by the day

Would you trust claims in A or B or neither?

Final­ly, here’s a selec­tion of fun brain teasers that read­ers have enjoyed the most this year so far:

#9. Where’s the baby?

#10. Can you con­nect these pairs of words?

#11. Want to test your stress level?

#12. Which way is the bus head­ing?

 

Wish­ing you and yours a healthy and stim­u­lat­ing April … and let’s get some Vit­a­min N (and D) this weekend!

The Sharp­Brains Team

A few slow-paced breaths are enough to significantly reduce physiological stress

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, shar­ing impor­tant brain & men­tal health news plus a cou­ple fun brain teasers to test your men­tal self-rota­tion skills.

#1. Study: Edu­ca­tion and lifestyle helped over a mil­lion old­er Amer­i­cans avoid seri­ous cog­ni­tive prob­lems in 2017

Let’s kick­start 2022 with some good news: “The preva­lence of seri­ous cog­ni­tive prob­lems in the US pop­u­la­tion aged 65 and old­er declined from 12.2% to 10.0% between 2008 and 2017. Had the preva­lence remained at the 2008 lev­els, there would have been an addi­tion­al 1.13 mil­lion old­er Amer­i­cans with seri­ous cog­ni­tive prob­lems in 2017.”

#2. Study: A few slow-paced breaths are enough to sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce phys­i­o­log­i­cal stress

And more good news: “Our find­ings showed that guid­ing a group of chil­dren through one minute of a slow-paced breath­ing exer­cise in an every­day set­ting can, in the moment, sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er the aver­age lev­el of phys­i­o­log­i­cal arousal” — Jele­na Obradovic at the Stan­ford Grad­u­ate School of Education

#3. APA: With dig­i­tal men­tal health going main­stream, will/ should psy­chol­o­gists be able to “pre­scribe” interventions?

“The asso­ci­a­tion is also work­ing with stake­hold­ers to address the fact that, at present, FDA-approved products—even those with a psy­chol­o­gy basis—need to be pre­scribed but that most psy­chol­o­gists lack this author­i­ty. To help fix this prob­lem, APA and oth­ers “are work­ing to devel­op a more inno­v­a­tive reg­u­la­to­ry mod­el that fits these soft­wares bet­ter and doesn’t use the word ‘pre­scrip­tion,’” said Vaile Wright, PhD, APA’s senior direc­tor of health care inno­va­tion. To aid in this effort, in Sep­tem­ber 2021, the FDA des­ig­nat­ed APA an “expert part­ner orga­ni­za­tion,” which will allow the asso­ci­a­tion to pro­vide exper­tise on behav­ioral change tech­nol­o­gy and methodology.”

#4. Dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics pio­neer Akili Inter­ac­tive plans to go pub­lic in mid-2022 at a $1B valuation

“By har­ness­ing advances in cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science and con­sumer tech­nol­o­gy, Akili is chang­ing the neu­ropsy­chi­atric treat­ment par­a­digm. Akili’s patent­ed and clin­i­cal­ly val­i­dat­ed tech­nol­o­gy plat­form rep­re­sents a new cat­e­go­ry of soft­ware-based med­i­cine: advanced and pro­pri­etary dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics that are designed to direct­ly tar­get neur­al phys­i­ol­o­gy to bet­ter serve the needs of patients and their families.”

Great com­pa­ny and team, very promis­ing approach…and quite tough con­text in the mar­kets (com­pa­ra­ble com­pa­ny Pear Ther­a­peu­tics went pub­lic in Decem­ber at $10/ share; closed Jan­u­ary 28th at $3.89/ share). The Times They Are a‑Changin’

#5. Are ADHD med­ica­tions over­pre­scribed or under­pre­scribed? (Quick answer: both)

Longer answer: “The main take­away from this study is that a only a minor­i­ty of chil­dren and teens with ADHD receive med­ica­tion treat­ment for the con­di­tion. And, rel­a­tive­ly few youth who don’t meet ADHD diag­nos­tic cri­te­ria are receiv­ing ADHD med­ica­tion. While rec­og­niz­ing that the actu­al num­bers pre­sent­ed are only esti­mates, it is there­fore rea­son­able to con­clude that under-treat­ment is sub­stan­tial­ly more com­mon than over-treatment.”

#6. Lyra Health, Big Health and Mantra Health raise a com­bined $332M to com­mer­cial­ize dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics for mental/ behav­ioral health

Hope­ful­ly this will lead into much high­er fund­ing for RCTs to explore the short-term and long-term Pros and Cons of a range of promis­ing interventions.

#7. Head­space Health acquires AI-dri­ven dig­i­tal men­tal health start-up Sayana

“Sayana per­son­al­izes users’ expe­ri­ences based on their check-ins and mood trends, sur­fac­ing high-qual­i­ty con­tent and self-care exer­cis­es root­ed in cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py (CBT), accep­tance com­mit­ment ther­a­py (ACT) and dialec­ti­cal behav­ioral ther­a­py (DBT), as well as breath­ing exer­cis­es” … “We’ve got­ten to the point now where con­tent rec­om­men­da­tions via AI are high­er qual­i­ty by engage­ment rate than rec­om­men­da­tions from providers them­selves. The AI rec­om­men­da­tions for con­tent are used more fre­quent­ly,” [Rus­sell Glass, CEO, Head­space Health] said.

#8. On schools, men­tal health, dig­i­tal sur­veil­lance, stu­dent pri­va­cy and parental input

“In the past year, school dis­tricts in Cal­i­for­nia and else­where have con­tract­ed with dig­i­tal sur­veil­lance com­pa­nies to spy on stu­dents at school and home, cit­ing the need for men­tal health sup­port dur­ing the pandemic.
Despite being a vig­i­lant and involved par­ent, I found out only recent­ly that my own kids, who attend high school in the Coro­na-Nor­co Uni­fied School Dis­trict, have been under con­stant dig­i­tal sur­veil­lance for the past year.”

This is not a wise way to intro­duce new tech­nolo­gies, much less those aimed at improv­ing men­tal health (of stu­dents, of par­ents, of staff). Your take?

 

Last but not least, as promised, a cou­ple fun brain teasers to test your men­tal self-rota­tion. What is men­tal self-rotation?

It is the cog­ni­tive skill to imag­ine your­self in dif­fer­ent loca­tions in space and to imag­ine your­self mov­ing accord­ing­ly. We need that skill in every­day activ­i­ties such as read­ing a map or find­ing our car in the park­ing lot. Enjoy!

#9. Test your con­cen­tra­tion and men­tal self-rota­tion skills with this quick brainteaser

#10. Men­tal rota­tion exer­cise to chal­lenge your brain’s pari­etal lobe

 

Wish­ing you and yours a healthy February,

 

The Sharp­Brains Team

On physical activity, neuroplasticity, depression, screen time, neuromodulation and more

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing this time eight sci­en­tif­ic reports and indus­try resources plus a few fun brain teasers.

#1. Study finds ulti­mate hack to pro­tect teen brains from harm­ful screen time: Exer­cise (and good role-mod­el­ing):

“Girls who spent less than an hour on screens and boys who spent less than 90 min­utes on screens were not neg­a­tive­ly impact­ed by it. But at high­er amounts of screen time, their life sat­is­fac­tion dropped significantly—they were less hap­py with their lives, and it got worse the more time they spent … (the) study also found that teens who got more reg­u­lar exer­cise had greater life sat­is­fac­tion and few­er phys­i­cal com­plaints for both gen­ders. Not only that, the effects were large­ly unre­lat­ed to how much time a teen spent on screens, so that if teens exer­cised more, it could poten­tial­ly undo the dam­age to their well-being that went along with even six or eight hours of screen time.”

#2. Stud­ies find grow­ing evi­dence link­ing weight, phys­i­cal activ­i­ty, neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and depres­sion:

‘Obe­si­ty and depres­sion are both major glob­al health chal­lenges, and our study pro­vides the most robust evi­dence to date that high­er BMI caus­es depres­sion,’ said lead author Jess O’Loughlin. ‘Under­stand­ing whether phys­i­cal or social fac­tors are respon­si­ble for this rela­tion­ship can help inform effec­tive strate­gies to improve men­tal health and wellbeing.’

#3. Dr. Judith Beck on the future of cog­ni­tive ther­a­py and psy­chother­a­py:

Let’s hope! — “I think Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Ther­a­py (CBT) will con­tin­ue to be adapt­ed for more prob­lems, diag­noses, and con­di­tions. We will train many kinds of care­givers, teach­ers, front-line work­ers, police, and even politicians.”

#4. Ratio­nal­i­ty doesn’t equal effi­cien­cy: Cell­phone data shows how we nav­i­gate cities:

“We dis­cov­ered that the most pre­dic­tive mod­el – rep­re­sent­ing the most com­mon mode of city nav­i­ga­tion – was not the quick­est path, but instead one that tried to min­i­mize the angle between the direc­tion a per­son is mov­ing and the line from the per­son to their des­ti­na­tion … Evo­lu­tion is a sto­ry of trade-offs, not opti­miza­tions, and the cog­ni­tive load of cal­cu­lat­ing a per­fect path rather than rely­ing on the sim­pler point­ing method might not be worth a few saved min­utes. After all, ear­ly humans had to pre­serve brain pow­er for dodg­ing stam­ped­ing ele­phants, just like peo­ple today might need to focus on avoid­ing aggres­sive SUVs.”

#5. Trend: Har­ness­ing dig­i­tal tech to improve men­tal health and well­ness:

“Designed with the help of Dutch aca­d­e­m­ic Isabela Granic … the game is cen­tred around an avatar who stays in bed for the day and aims to relax play­ers by using sooth­ing music, mut­ed colours and self-care prac­tices. Think med­i­ta­tive tasks such as word games and guid­ed breath­ing exer­cis­es. There’s no way to win, com­pete or binge – in fact, it delib­er­ate­ly starts to feel bor­ing after a few min­utes of play, which dis­in­cen­tivizes mind­less scrolling. #Self­Care was an instant hit, gar­ner­ing half a mil­lion down­loads in its first six weeks with­out any advertising…”

#6. Study: Per­son­al­ized, closed-loop neu­ro­mod­u­la­tion can (one day) become a “pace­mak­er for the brain”:

“What made this proof-of-prin­ci­ple tri­al suc­cess­ful was the dis­cov­ery of a neur­al bio­mark­er – a spe­cif­ic pat­tern of brain activ­i­ty that indi­cates the onset of symp­toms – and the team’s abil­i­ty to cus­tomize a new DBS device to respond only when it rec­og­nizes that pat­tern. The device then stim­u­lates a dif­fer­ent area of the brain cir­cuit, cre­at­ing on-demand, imme­di­ate ther­a­py that is unique to both the patient’s brain and the neur­al cir­cuit caus­ing her illness.”

#7. Six guide­lines to nav­i­gate the Aduhelm con­tro­ver­sy and (hope­ful­ly) help patients with Mild Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment and ear­ly-stage Alzheimer’s Dis­ease:

“After ini­tial­ly indi­cat­ing that Aduhelm could be pre­scribed to any­one with demen­tia, the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion now spec­i­fies that the pre­scrip­tion drug be giv­en to indi­vid­u­als with mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment or ear­ly-stage Alzheimer’s, the groups in which the med­ica­tion was studied.
Yet this nar­row­er rec­om­men­da­tion rais­es ques­tions. What does a diag­no­sis of mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment mean? Is Aduhelm appro­pri­ate for all peo­ple with mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment, or only some? And who should decide which patients qual­i­fy for treat­ment: demen­tia spe­cial­ists or pri­ma­ry care physicians?”

#8. The Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion (FTC) hard­ens data secu­ri­ty rules for health apps and devices:

“With data breach­es on the rise, the FTC is look­ing to make health apps more account­able for telling patients when their data has been exposed.”

 

Wish­ing you and yours a sweet Hal­loween and a healthy month of November,

The Sharp­Brains Team

Update: Promote brain plasticity by taking your daily exercise pill — physical and cognitive

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By lordzg/ shutterstock.com

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

#1. A must-read, and must-prac­tice: Pro­mote brain plas­tic­i­ty and keep your mind at ease by tak­ing your dai­ly “exer­cise pill”

#2. If cog­ni­tive stim­u­la­tion came in a pill it’d be worth a quadrillion, give or take a few tril­lions: Study finds that cog­ni­tive activ­i­ty in old age may delay the onset of demen­tia by 5 years

#3. “A young child with low cog­ni­tive con­trol is also more like­ly to devel­op anx­i­ety lat­er on in child­hood, while one with a high­er capac­i­ty will be more resilient to stress. Rais­ing cog­ni­tive con­trol could both treat anx­i­ety in young chil­dren and poten­tial­ly pre­vent it from becom­ing worse over time” — Help­ing young brains fight off anx­i­ety by train­ing and rais­ing cog­ni­tive control

#4. The neu­ro­science behind why our brains will need time to adjust to ‘un-social distancing’

“In a nation­al sur­vey last fall, 36% of adults in the U.S. – includ­ing 61% of young adults – report­ed feel­ing “seri­ous lone­li­ness” dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Sta­tis­tics like these sug­gest peo­ple would be itch­ing to hit the social scene. But if the idea of mak­ing small talk at a crowd­ed hap­py hour sounds ter­ri­fy­ing to you, you’re not alone. Near­ly half of Amer­i­cans report­ed feel­ing uneasy about return­ing to in-per­son inter­ac­tion regard­less of vac­ci­na­tion status.”
“The stress of the pan­dem­ic has made an exist­ing men­tal health cri­sis even more alarm­ing. We’re see­ing this first­hand in ado­les­cents in class­rooms across the coun­try and in adults who are report­ing symp­toms of anx­i­ety and depres­sion at a rate four times pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els” — Ian Chiu, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor at Owl Ventures

#7. Study shows promis­ing results of EEG-based brain train­ing in help­ing adults with ADHD

“The study demon­strates for the first time the ben­e­fi­cial neu­robe­hav­ioral effect of a sin­gle NFB ses­sion in adult ADHD, and rein­forces the notion that Event-relat­ed poten­tials (ERPs) could serve as use­ful diagnostic/prognostic mark­ers of exec­u­tive dysfunction.”

#8. Sys­tem­at­ic review calls for ear­ly tar­get­ed inter­ven­tions to help babies and tod­dlers with cere­bral pal­sy har­ness time win­dow with max­i­mum brain plasticity

“Cur­rent­ly, ear­ly diag­no­sis of high-risk CP offers the oppor­tu­ni­ty for ear­ly inter­ven­tion at a crit­i­cal devel­op­men­tal plas­tic­i­ty win­dow. The ear­li­er we inter­vene, the bet­ter the out­come is.”

“Sup­port for men­tal health has need­ed improve­ment for many years in the UK. The path­ways for access­ing ser­vices are con­vo­lut­ed, wait­ing lists are exten­sive, and out­comes are poor over the long term … Com­ing up with new ways to main­tain good men­tal health, in a pre­ven­ta­tive way, will be as essen­tial as pro­vid­ing tools for acute care and we believe tech­nol­o­gy has a sig­nif­i­cant role to play.” — Dr Peter Bloom­field, FCC’s head of Pol­i­cy and Research

Wish­ing you a hap­py and healthy month of August,

The Sharp­Brains Team

NB: Please remem­ber that, if you’re look­ing for some fun and var­ied cog­ni­tive exer­cise, you can always try these 25 Brain Teasers, Puz­zles & Games that Sharp­Brains read­ers have enjoyed the most.