Brain/ Mental Health

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

by Leave a Comment

On one of our “walk and talks” around the lush trails of Rock Creek Park in DC sur­round­ed by bik­ers, run­ners, cars and the occa­sion­al deer, Wendy and Lisa talked about aging. Wendy’s moth­er, who had her chil­dren in her ear­ly 20s, was still join­ing the family’s gru­el­ing sum­mer hikes with her chil­dren and nine grand­chil­dren well into her 60s. Wendy mused about how much old­er she would be when their kids could have their own kids. It dawned on her that her health was not just a here and now issue, but an invest­ment in that future. We agreed to help each oth­er cul­ti­vate the habits and make time to build strength as well as reserves, both phys­i­cal and men­tal, for the long-term. Their goal: to enjoy being active in their 40s and 50s while also lay­ing the ground­work to con­tin­ue being active into their 60s, 70s, and beyond. [Read more…] about New book pro­vides prac­ti­cal guid­ance for women (and men) to rebal­ance our lifestyles and build Cog­ni­tive Reserve

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

by Leave a Comment

The num­ber of peo­ple strug­gling with poor men­tal health and men­tal dis­or­ders has been ris­ing around the world over the past few decades. Those who are strug­gling are increas­ing­ly fac­ing dif­fi­cul­ties access­ing the kind of sup­port they need – leav­ing many wait­ing months for help, if they even qual­i­fy for treatment.

While it’s clear that more needs to be done to improve access to treat­ment, it doesn’t mean peo­ple inevitably have to strug­gle with their men­tal health as a result. In fact, there are many things peo­ple can do on their own to main­tain good men­tal health – and even pre­vent men­tal health prob­lems from devel­op­ing in the first place. Accord­ing to our recent research, one of the steps you can take to improve your men­tal well­be­ing may be as sim­ple as believ­ing that you can.

In our recent study, we asked 3,015 Dan­ish adults to fill out a sur­vey that asked ques­tions about men­tal health – such as whether they believe they can do some­thing to keep men­tal­ly healthy, whether they had done some­thing in the past two weeks to sup­port their men­tal health, and also whether they were cur­rent­ly strug­gling with a men­tal health prob­lem. We then assessed their lev­el of men­tal well­be­ing using the Short Warwick–Edinburgh Men­tal Well-being Scale, which is wide­ly used by health­care pro­fes­sion­als and researchers to mea­sure men­tal well­be­ing. [Read more…] about Study on the “ABCs of Men­tal Health” finds that sim­ply believ­ing you can improve men­tal well­be­ing helps actu­al­ly improve it

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

by Leave a Comment

The effi­ca­cy of Men­tal Health Apps (phar­mafo­rum):

In Jan­u­ary, PLOS Dig­i­tal Health pub­lished a study which claimed that there’s “sparse” data to sup­port the effi­ca­cy of most men­tal health apps.

In their meta-analy­sis of pub­lished stud­ies, the authors found uni­ver­sal defi­cien­cies and con­clud­ed that there’s no con­vinc­ing evi­dence that app-based inter­ven­tions deliv­er mean­ing­ful out­comes. With­out dig­ging fur­ther, one might think the cur­rent case for dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics is weak.

I reviewed all 14 meta-analy­ses includ­ed in the study and found the analy­sis to be accu­rate, but incom­plete. [Read more…] about “Dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics” vs. “Men­tal health apps”: A grow­ing debate on stan­dards, reg­u­la­tion and efficacy

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

by Leave a Comment

Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty VR spin­out demon­strates sig­nif­i­cant psy­chother­a­py ben­e­fits in Lancet study (Fierce Healthcare):

Vir­tu­al real­i­ty can help treat symp­toms in patients with psy­chosis, accord­ing to a new study pub­lished in The Lancet Psychiatry.

GameChangeVR auto­mates psy­chother­a­py, guid­ing users with a vir­tu­al coach. It was devel­oped by Oxford­VR, a dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics com­pa­ny, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford and Oxford Health NHS Foun­da­tion Trust … The study, based on 346 patients, found that auto­mat­ed VR ther­a­py led to “sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tions” in symp­toms of anx­ious avoid­ance and dis­tress. The tech­nol­o­gy espe­cial­ly ben­e­fit­ed those with severe symp­toms. The study con­clud­ed that the tech­nol­o­gy has the poten­tial to increase access to effec­tive care for psy­chosis. [Read more…] about Study: Auto­mat­ed VR psy­chother­a­py can help reduce anx­i­ety and dis­tress, espe­cial­ly among those with psy­chosis and severe agoraphobia

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

by Leave a Comment

Glob­al dig­i­tal health fund­ing falls 36% with few­er megarounds, IPOs (Fierce Healthcare):

After two years of record-break­ing invest­ment in dig­i­tal health, cap­i­tal flow into the sec­tor took a dive in the first quar­ter of 2022.

The glob­al dig­i­tal health mar­ket saw fund­ing decrease 36% from the fourth quar­ter of 2021, total­ing $10.4 bil­lion, as investors react­ed to sup­ply chain woes, the Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine and a volatile stock mar­ket, accord­ing to a new CB Insights report. [Read more…] about Fund­ing for dig­i­tal health start-ups, espe­cial­ly in men­tal health, fall sub­stan­tial­ly in Q1’22

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

by

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