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Brain/ Mental Health

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

May 17, 2022 by SharpBrains 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

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: book, Cognitive-impairment, cognitive-reserve, dementia, healthy-aging, lifelong, Lifelong Neuroplasticity, mental health, neuroplasticity, physical-health, Rebalance

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

May 12, 2022 by The Conversation 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

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: mental health, mental wellbeing, mental-disorders, mental-health-treatment, mind, treatment

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

May 9, 2022 by SharpBrains 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

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Big Health, digital health, digital therapeutics, Digital Therapeutics Alliance, DTx, FDA, Happify Health, mental health apps, mental illness, meta-analysis, Orexo, PEAR, PLOS Digital Health

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

May 5, 2022 by SharpBrains 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

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: agoraphobia, cognitive, cognitive model, gameChange, psychosis, Psychotherapy, virtual coach, virtual-reality

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

May 3, 2022 by SharpBrains 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

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: cerebral, digital health, digital health market, market, Mental Health Tech, Talkspace

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

April 28, 2022 by SharpBrains

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

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, SharpBrains Monthly eNewsletter, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Altoida, brain-cells, brain-health-market, BrainChart, cognitive well being, digital therapeutics, Eisai, foggy brains, Geisinger, grey-matter, neuroimaging, psychedelic, psychiatric conditions, white-matter

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