Tracking Health and Wellness Applications of Brain Science

Technology & Innovation

FDA-approved, Cybin-sponsored clinicial trial to measure ketamine’s impact on the brain via Kernel Flow neuroimaging helmet

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Kernel’s Brain-Imag­ing Hel­met Approved For Clin­i­cal Tri­al On Patients Using Ket­a­mine (Forbes):

The U.S. Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion has approved a clin­i­cal tri­al using a neu­roimag­ing hel­met made by Los Ange­les-based Ker­nel to track what hap­pens in the brain when a human takes a psy­che­del­ic dose of ket­a­mine. [Read more…] about FDA-approved, Cybin-spon­sored clin­i­cial tri­al to mea­sure ketamine’s impact on the brain via Ker­nel Flow neu­roimag­ing helmet

Beacon Biosignals raises $27M to scale EEG, AI-based neurobiomarker discovery platform

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Neu­rotech start­up Bea­con Biosig­nals scores $27M to bring AI to EEG analy­sis (Med­C­i­ty News):

Elec­troen­cephalog­ra­phy is a decades-old tech­nique for cap­tur­ing brain activ­i­ty, data that are used to eval­u­ate brain dis­or­ders. Bea­con Biosig­nals is apply­ing arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to these tests, and the neu­rotech­nol­o­gy start­up has found a ready mar­ket in phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies inter­est­ed in assess­ing how their exper­i­men­tal brain ther­a­pies are work­ing. Now Bea­con Biosig­nals has some­thing else: $27 mil­lion in financ­ing. [Read more…] about Bea­con Biosig­nals rais­es $27M to scale EEG, AI-based neu­ro­bio­mark­er dis­cov­ery platform

The American Medical Association’s (AMA) to ease access to remote Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Monitoring

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The Dig­i­tal Ther­a­peu­tics Alliance Wel­comes Deci­sion by the CPT® Edi­to­r­i­al Pan­el to Clar­i­fy Report­ing of Remote Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Ther­a­py Mon­i­tor­ing Ser­vices (press release):

As the lead­ing inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tion on dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tic thought lead­er­ship and edu­ca­tion, the Dig­i­tal Ther­a­peu­tics Alliance (DTA) wel­comes the Amer­i­can Med­ical Association’s (AMA) Cur­rent Pro­ce­dur­al Ter­mi­nol­o­gy (CPT®) Edi­to­r­i­al Pan­el’s recent deci­sion to clar­i­fy report­ing of remote cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py (CBT) mon­i­tor­ing ser­vices. The changes to the CPT code set reflect the grow­ing recog­ni­tion that dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics (DTx) are an effec­tive treat­ment for patients with men­tal health con­di­tions and physi­cians should ulti­mate­ly be reim­bursed for their time spent pre­scrib­ing, mon­i­tor­ing, and sup­ply­ing online CBT tech­nolo­gies. [Read more…] about The Amer­i­can Med­ical Association’s (AMA) to ease access to remote Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Ther­a­py Monitoring

Click Therapeutics raises further $52M to build up digital therapeutics pipeline for depression, insomnia, smoking cessation and more

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With Sanofi still on board, Click Ther­a­peu­tics clos­es $52M series B for dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics in depres­sion, chron­ic pain and more (Fierce Biotech):

Anoth­er medtech devel­op­er’s plans to cre­ate dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics to treat a wide range of ill­ness­es are click­ing into place, thanks to a third mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar invest­ment in Click Ther­a­peu­tics in bare­ly a year. [Read more…] about Click Ther­a­peu­tics rais­es fur­ther $52M to build up dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics pipeline for depres­sion, insom­nia, smok­ing ces­sa­tion and more

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

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

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Recent­ly, the Wall Street Jour­nal ran an arti­cle about how Insta­gram was affect­ing teen men­tal health. In par­tic­u­lar, some inter­nal stud­ies at Face­book (which owns Insta­gram) appeared to con­firm that when teen girls used the site, they suf­fered poor­er body image and were at increased risk for depres­sion and eat­ing disorders.

But is social media use itself at fault for mak­ing teen men­tal health worse? While some stud­ies sug­gest it is, oth­ers paint a more nuanced pic­ture, find­ing it dif­fi­cult to pin­point prob­lems with screen time itself ver­sus oth­er fac­tors some­times asso­ci­at­ed with social media use that may reduce teen well-being—like cyber­bul­ly­ing or social iso­la­tion. Plus, cur­rent con­clu­sions are often based on data from a sin­gle point in time, which makes it hard to prove that extend­ed screen time actu­al­ly caus­es poor­er men­tal health.

Now, find­ings from an inter­na­tion­al study on teens (details below) add more to this debate and point toward poten­tial guide­lines for screen use. Focus­ing on over 577,000 ado­les­cents from 42 coun­tries across Europe and North Amer­i­ca, the study’s results sug­gest that we might not have to wor­ry about screen time in small­er dos­es, until it reach­es a cer­tain harm­ful lev­el, and that exer­cise can play a pro­tec­tive role no mat­ter how much time a teen spends on screens. [Read more…] about Study finds ulti­mate hack to pro­tect teen brains from harm­ful screen time: Exer­cise (and good role-modeling)