Some peo­ple may be uneasy with the idea of “brain enhance­ment,” but the quest to boost our brain­pow­er is noth­ing new; it is an essen­tial part of human nature. Ever since Homo sapi­ens emerged near­ly 200,000 years ago, we have been search­ing for ways to upgrade the hard­ware and wet­ware in our heads, and we’ve been cre­at­ing and using tools to help us do it—physical and cog­ni­tive tools that help us solve prob­lems and com­plete tasks more effi­cient­ly, tools that extend our nat­ur­al abil­i­ties and allow us to do things that weren’t pos­si­ble before. Lan­guage, num­bers, sci­ence, education—these are all tools we’ve devel­oped to improve our men­tal capac­i­ties.

Our most pow­er­ful tool for nav­i­gat­ing the ever-chang­ing world, how­ev­er, is the brain itself. Read the rest of this entry »

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Neurable Rais­es $6 Mil­lion Series A To Build An ‘Every­day’ Brain-Com­put­er Inter­face (Forbes):

“Neurable has announced a $6 mil­lion Series A round of fund­ing to move beyond VR appli­ca­tions and devel­op the every­day brain-com­put­er inter­face. These will take a head­phones form fac­tor and will tar­get con­sumers. This marks an excit­ing advance­ment for brain-com­put­er inter­faces (BCI) Read the rest of this entry »

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Par­ents pay thou­sands for ‘brain train­ing’ to help kids with ADHD and autism. But does it work? (NBC News):

“…As the num­ber of chil­dren diag­nosed with ADHD and autism surges in the U.S., accord­ing to fed­er­al data, and as par­ents become exas­per­at­ed with treat­ments that don’t work or involve med­ica­tions that car­ry the risk of side effects, neu­rotech­nol­o­gy indus­try ana­lysts pre­dict the demand for pro­grams like these will only grow Read the rest of this entry »

The new UCSF Jan Shrem and Maria Manet­ti Shrem Neu­rol­o­gy Clin­ic will be housed in the Joan and San­ford I. Weill Neu­ro­sciences Build­ing.

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UCSF to Launch Unique Neu­rol­o­gy Clin­ic Spe­cial­iz­ing in Dif­fi­cult-to-Diag­nose Cas­es (press release):

“A pro­posed neu­rol­o­gy clin­ic at UCSF Med­ical Cen­ter at Mis­sion Bay aims to short­cut the “diag­nos­tic odyssey” faced by many patients with baf­fling brain symp­toms that do not meet the stan­dard cri­te­ria for any spe­cif­ic con­di­tion.

Patients with ambigu­ous neu­ro­log­i­cal symp­toms, but no diag­no­sis, fre­quent­ly Read the rest of this entry »

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Ready for a Hap­py New Year  and Hap­py New Decade?

Here’s a spe­cial edi­tion of the Sharp­Brains month­ly e‑newsletter fea­tur­ing the lat­est on brain health and men­tal well-being — we hope you enjoy these tips and advice about what to do, and what not to, to pro­mote brain well­ness in 2020 and beyond:

Prac­tice Breath­ing & Com­pas­sion: Three evi­dence-based ways to devel­op a resilient mind

… and a Sport you love: Play sports (smart­ly) for a qui­eter brain

Chal­lenge your friends, often: For bet­ter mem­o­ry and think­ing skills at age 70, play cards and board games from age 11

… for exam­ple by solv­ing big prob­lems togeth­er: Mind­strong Health recruits slew of Sil­i­con Val­ley tal­ent

When in trou­ble, con­sid­er ther­a­py before meds: To treat depres­sion, ther­a­py alone works bet­ter than ther­a­py com­bined with anti­de­pres­sants

… your might even be able to access it pri­vate­ly, online: First Dig­i­tal Health For­mu­la­ry by Express Scripts includes CBT-based pro­grams to treat depres­sion, anx­i­ety and insom­nia

Final­ly, beware “brain-boost­ing” sup­ple­ments, and don’t jump on direct-to-con­sumer tran­scra­nial direct cur­rent stim­u­la­tion (tDCS) unless you under­stand Pros and Cons

… but always keep your mind open to awe and to new ways to tease your brain, see the world around us and even shape it!

Wishing you a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year and New Decade,

The SharpBrains Team