Brain/ Mental Health

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains e‑newsletter, this time cov­er­ing the lat­est devel­op­ments in stress research, med­i­ta­tion, vir­tu­al real­i­ty, anti-amy­loid drugs, cog­ni­tive screen­ings, and more.

#1. The 7 Habits of High­ly Stress-Resilient Minds

“Any­thing worth doing will have aspects of stress woven through: chal­lenge, dis­com­fort, risk. We can’t change that. But what we can change is our response” – Elis­sa Epel, Direc­tor of the Aging, Metab­o­lism, and Emo­tions Cen­ter at UCSF

#2. Har­ness­ing mind­ful­ness and vir­tu­al real­i­ty sim­u­la­tions to max­i­mize sports performance

Good tips and tools to “sim­u­late or repli­cate real-world per­for­mance anx­i­ety and pres­sure in a con­trolled way, allow­ing pro­gres­sive and man­aged expo­sure to stress.”

#3. 8 week Mind­ful­ness-Based Stress Reduc­tion (MBSR) course found to be as effec­tive as Lexapro (esc­i­talo­pram) to treat adults with anx­i­ety dis­or­ders, and with far few­er side effects

“When peo­ple can come into a clin­ic and be seen by a psy­chol­o­gist or psy­chi­a­trist and giv­en a full evaluation—where the [pro­fes­sion­al] can dis­cuss with the patient the option of med­ica­tion, psy­chother­a­py, or meditation—that will be a good thing” — study’s lead author, Dr. Eliz­a­beth Hoge at George­town University

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

Brave evi­dence-based deci­sion, fac­ing con­sid­er­able pres­sure — “impor­tant ques­tions still need to be answered to sup­port peo­ple with Medicare, care­givers, and their refer­ring and treat­ing physi­cians to make informed, appro­pri­ate deci­sions about use of any drug in this par­tic­u­lar class” … also, reg­istry-based stud­ies “may be used to assess whether out­comes seen in care­ful­ly con­trolled clin­i­cal tri­als (e.g., FDA tri­als) are repro­duced in the real-world and in a broad­er range of patients.”

#5. Pilot pro­gram by IU and Davos Alzheimer’s Col­lab­o­ra­tive to test AI-pow­ered cog­ni­tive screen­ing at scale

“…The test itself, the Linus Health Core Cog­ni­tive Eval­u­a­tion, is com­prised of a lifestyle-based ques­tion­naire and a

dig­i­tal cog­ni­tive assess­ment, which asks patients to remem­ber three unre­lat­ed words, com­plete the clock draw­ing test, and repeat the three words. The tool then uses arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) to detect sub­tle signs of cog­ni­tive impair­ment and gen­er­ates a score…“[Using that score,] they get a stop­light that’s green, yel­low, or red. And the doc­tor can take a quick look at it and decide, ‘what do I do with this?’”

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

Unfor­tu­nate news from a pio­neer in dig­i­tal med­i­cine, show­ing how hard it is to bring non-inva­sive inter­ven­tions to mar­ket via clin­i­cal channels.

#7. Beyond bulky VR head­sets: Voice recog­ni­tion, eye track­ing, and nat­ur­al ges­tures in the era of the meta­verse and the “Medi-verse”

“We don’t real­ly know the poten­tial of the meta­verse … includ­ing a poten­tial “Medi-verse” that focus­es on health­care deliv­ery. But … one thing that seems unlike­ly is us con­tin­u­ing to inter­act with the dig­i­tal world through desk­top com­put­ers, smart­phones, and bulky head­sets. More like­ly, we will inter­act with the dig­i­tal world through voice recog­ni­tion, eye track­ing, and nat­ur­al ges­tures like in the sce­nario above.” -- Dr. Cori Lath­an, author of Invent­ing the Future: Sto­ries from a Techno-Optimist

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

We have brains; there­fore we feel, and think, and are. Some­thing we cel­e­brat­ed dur­ing Brain Aware­ness Week (March 13–19th) and can and should keep cel­e­brat­ing every day!

 

Have a great month of May