Tracking Health and Wellness Applications of Brain Science

Mental health for digital natives in the covid era: Shouldn’t remote counselling be the first line of engagement & treatment?

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The ben­e­fits of remote con­sul­ta­tion for men­tal health treat­ment (Health Europa):

Thor­b­jorg Vig­fus­dót­tir, a cog­ni­tive psy­chol­o­gist by train­ing, spent 12 years as a politi­cian in her native Ice­land with the goal of direct­ing her knowl­edge on the devel­op­ment of the brain into edu­ca­tion and pub­lic pol­i­cy. After leav­ing pol­i­tics to form a com­pa­ny pro­vid­ing remote speech ther­a­py in Ice­landic schools, she was found­ed Kara Con­nect, an online con­sul­ta­tion plat­form enabling ther­a­pists and clin­i­cians to pro­vide remote care and treat­ment, which was recent­ly adopt­ed by the Nation­al Uni­ver­si­ty Hos­pi­tal of Ice­land (Land­spí­tali).

[Read more…] about Men­tal health for dig­i­tal natives in the covid era: Shouldn’t remote coun­selling be the first line of engage­ment & treat­ment?

Systematic review finds ten lifestyle factors that clearly impact the probability of developing Alzheimer’s disease (AD)

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Although there’s still no cure, researchers are con­tin­u­ing to devel­op a bet­ter under­stand­ing of what increas­es a person’s risk of devel­op­ing Alzheimer’s dis­ease. A recent study that looked at 396 stud­ies has even been able to iden­ti­fy ten risk fac­tors that are shown to increase the like­li­hood of devel­op­ing the dis­ease.

Here are the fac­tors researchers iden­ti­fied – and why they’re asso­ci­at­ed with a high­er risk.

1. Lower education level

A low­er edu­ca­tion lev­el is asso­ci­at­ed with an increased risk of Alzheimer’s dis­ease. Pre­vi­ous evi­dence shows the longer you spend in edu­ca­tion, the low­er your risk of devel­op­ing demen­tia. Research look­ing at the brains of peo­ple from dif­fer­ent edu­ca­tion­al back­grounds also showed that peo­ple who were more edu­cat­ed had heav­ier brains. As you lose one third of your brain weight because of demen­tia, a heav­ier brain may make you more resilient. [Read more…] about Sys­tem­at­ic review finds ten lifestyle fac­tors that clear­ly impact the prob­a­bil­i­ty of devel­op­ing Alzheimer’s dis­ease (AD)

Update: Should candidates to high office should pass a cognitive/ mental fitness test?

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Wow, that was a cou­ple of very insight­ful dis­cus­sions, via social media no less.

#1. The first one was about whether heads of state and can­di­dates to high office should pass a cognitive/ men­tal fit­ness test. Click HERE to read and dis­cuss some of the sharpest com­ments, such as…

  • “I won­der what brought this up.”
  • “Def­i­nite­ly. We rou­tine­ly screen appli­cants for a wide range of jobs.”
  • “Then the bal­ance of polit­i­cal pow­er would shift towards the design­ers of those tests.”
  • “That’s what debates are for.”
  • “Yes, but prob­a­bly nobody would pass it.”
  • “No, because if we can’t judge that for our­selves, then what busi­ness do we have vot­ing at all?”

#2. The sec­ond debate cen­tered on the future of men­tal health: In ten years, will we see DSM‑6 or Some­thing Much Bet­ter (SMB‑1)? Would you say “Some­thing bet­ter hope­ful­ly” or “Well con­sid­er­ing we approach men­tal health from a dis­ease model.…that’s the first prob­lem” or “DSM is a tool, and a very use­ful one. As any oth­er tool it depends on the use you make of it,” or some­thing else.

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing as always new think­ing, research and tools for life­long brain health and men­tal fit­ness.

#3. Study: Across all ide­o­log­i­cal groups, high­er cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty and intel­lec­tu­al humil­i­ty pre­dicts sup­port for free speech

#4. Let’s under­stand how to increase resis­tance to tau and amy­loid pro­teins so we can all become “super-agers.”  Brain scans show low­er accu­mu­la­tion of tau and amy­loid pathol­o­gy among cog­ni­tive “super-agers”

#5. For exam­ple: Jobs with low phys­i­cal stress and good work­ing con­di­tions linked to larg­er hip­pocam­pus and bet­ter mem­o­ry

#6. Want­ed: 30,000 vol­un­teers! Large UC study to inves­ti­gate when and how brain train­ing trans­fers (or does not) to broad­er cog­ni­tive and health ben­e­fits

#7. Time­ly ques­tions: “How com­mon are neu­ro­log­i­cal and psy­chi­atric com­pli­ca­tions in patients with COVID-19? What pro­por­tion of neu­ro­log­i­cal and psy­chi­atric com­pli­ca­tions affect the (cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem) ver­sus the periph­er­al ner­vous sys­tem, and are nov­el syn­dromes emerg­ing? And who is most at risk?” Sur­vey finds ischaemic stroke and altered men­tal sta­tus as most com­mon neu­ro­log­i­cal com­pli­ca­tions in severe COVID-19 cas­es

#8. “Our mind is one of the only things that we can­not con­sis­tent­ly mea­sure and quan­ti­fy. And humans do remark­able things when we can mea­sure some­thing.”  Ker­nel rais­es $53 mil­lion to ease access to rich neur­al data and mar­ket Neu­ro­science as a Ser­vice (NaaS)

#9. “We are tak­ing proven cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­pies and ful­ly automat­ing them to deliv­er the care scal­ably and con­sis­tent­ly as drugs.” Start­up Big Health rais­es $39M to uni­ver­sal­ize access to cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py (CBT) for anx­i­ety and poor sleep

#10. Build­ing on Bill Gates’ orig­i­nal goal of ‘a com­put­er on every desk,’ per­haps it’s time for ‘real-time men­tal health sup­port on every phone.’ Microsoft announces sup­port for three inno­v­a­tive men­tal health ser­vices har­ness­ing arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI)

#11. Res­o­nance. Empa­thy. Aware­ness. Com­pas­sion. Hope. And our favorite… Humor. Six tips to help reg­u­late stress lev­els in our orga­ni­za­tions

#12. Final­ly, a fun brain teas­er. What do you see, rec­tan­gles or cir­cles?

 

Wish­ing you a good and safe August,

The Sharp­Brains Team

Debate: Should heads of state and candidates to high office pass a cognitive/ mental fitness test?

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Wow, that was quite a dis­cus­sion over at Face­book groups on Neu­ro­science, Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty, Psy­chi­a­try & Clin­i­cal Psy­chol­o­gy, Sin­gu­lar­i­ty and beyond as a response to the ques­tion Should heads of state and can­di­dates to high office pass a cognitive/ men­tal fit­ness test?

Here are (light­ly edit­ed, ran­dom­ly ordered, anonymized) some of the sharpest com­ments among the 100+ sub­mit­ted; some Pro, some Con, and many “it depends:” [Read more…] about Debate: Should heads of state and can­di­dates to high office pass a cognitive/ men­tal fit­ness test?

Jobs with low physical stress and good working conditions linked to larger hippocampus and better memory

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CSU study links phys­i­cal stress on the job with brain and mem­o­ry decline in old­er age (press release):

A new study out of Col­orado State Uni­ver­si­ty has found that phys­i­cal stress in one’s job may be asso­ci­at­ed with faster brain aging and poor­er mem­o­ry.

Aga Burzyn­s­ka, an assis­tant pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Human Devel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Stud­ies, and her research team con­nect­ed occu­pa­tion­al sur­vey respons­es with brain-imag­ing data from 99 cog­ni­tive­ly nor­mal old­er adults, age 60 to 79. They found that those who report­ed high lev­els of phys­i­cal stress in their most recent job had small­er vol­umes in the hip­pocam­pus and per­formed poor­er on mem­o­ry tasks. The hip­pocam­pus is the part of the brain that is crit­i­cal for mem­o­ry and is affect­ed in both nor­mal aging and in demen­tia.

[Read more…] about Jobs with low phys­i­cal stress and good work­ing con­di­tions linked to larg­er hip­pocam­pus and bet­ter mem­o­ry

Brain scans show lower accumulation of tau and amyloid pathology among cognitive “super-agers”

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– Tau (blue) and amy­loid (orange) dis­tri­b­u­tion pat­terns for super-agers, nor­mal-agers and MCI patients, when com­pared to a group of younger, healthy, cog­ni­tive­ly nor­mal, amy­loid-neg­a­tive indi­vid­u­als. Cred­it: Mer­le C. Hoenig.

Super-Agers Show Resis­tance to Tau and Amy­loid Accu­mu­la­tion, Main­tain High Cog­ni­tive Func­tion (Soci­ety of Nuclear Med­i­cine and Mol­e­c­u­lar Imag­ing press release):

Super-agers, or indi­vid­u­als whose cog­ni­tive skills are above the norm even at an advanced age, have been found to have increased resis­tance to tau and amy­loid pro­teins, accord­ing to research pre­sent­ed at the Soci­ety of Nuclear Med­i­cine and Mol­e­c­u­lar Imag­ing (SNMMI) 2020 Annu­al Meet­ing. An analy­sis of positron emis­sion tomog­ra­phy (PET) scans has shown that com­pared to nor­mal-agers and those with mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment, super-agers have a low­er bur­den of tau and amy­loid pathol­o­gy asso­ci­at­ed with neu­rode­gen­er­a­tion, which prob­a­bly allows them to main­tain their cog­ni­tive per­for­mance. An image show­ing the com­par­i­son of tau and amy­loid dis­tri­b­u­tion pat­terns in these dif­fer­ent cog­ni­tive aging tra­jec­to­ries has been select­ed as SNMMI’s 2020 Image of the Year. [Read more…] about Brain scans show low­er accu­mu­la­tion of tau and amy­loid pathol­o­gy among cog­ni­tive “super-agers”