BRAIN Initiative: New call to action amidst growing skepticism

A White House Call To Action to Advance the BRAIN Ini­tia­tive (press release): “Under this ini­tia­tive, Fed­er­al agen­cies such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health (NIH), the Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion (NSF), and the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion (FDA) are sup­port­ing the devel­op­ment and appli­ca­tion of inno­v­a­tive, new tech­nolo­gies that…

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Neuroscientists: Develop digital games to improve brain function and well-being

Authors: Devel­op dig­i­tal games to improve brain func­tion and well-being (UW-Madi­­son News): “Neu­ro­sci­en­tists should help to devel­op com­pelling dig­i­tal games that boost brain func­tion and improve well-being, say two pro­fes­sors spe­cial­iz­ing in the field in a com­men­tary arti­cle pub­lished in the sci­ence jour­nal Nature. In the Feb. 28 issue, the two — Daphne Bave­li­er of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Rochester…

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New $1 million grant to study working memory training in children with fragile X

MIND Insti­tute researchers receive $1 mil­lion grant to study cog­ni­tive train­ing in chil­dren with frag­ile X (UC Davis Health Sys­tem News): “Researchers at the UC Davis MIND Insti­tute will exam­ine whether chil­dren and youth with frag­ile X syn­drome can improve their work­ing mem­o­ry, cog­ni­tion and behav­ior by using an online com­put­er-based cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­gram, through a new…

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Brain fitness meets HRV and EEG biometrics and neuroinformatics

As an active par­tic­i­pant in the Open­ViBE project (a soft­ware plat­form to design, test and use Brain-Com­put­er Inter­faces), in sci­en­tif­ic as well as tech­ni­cal capac­i­ties, I have long been focused on ways to process, ana­lyze and put brain sig­nals to prac­ti­cal use. When I start­ed read­ing on the sub­ject of brain fit­ness a few years…

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Study: Adaptive Working Memory Training Can Reduce ADHD-related Off-Task Behavior

For a num­ber of rea­sons, there remains an impor­tant need to devel­op research sup­port­ed treat­ments for ADHD in addi­tion to med­ica­tion and behav­ior ther­a­py. Regard­ing med­ica­tion, not all chil­dren ben­e­fit from tak­ing it, some expe­ri­ence intol­er­a­ble side effects, and many con­tin­ue to strug­gle even when med­ica­tion pro­vides some ben­e­fit. Behav­ior ther­a­py can be dif­fi­cult for…

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Personalized Medicine in Psychiatry: from DSM to brain-based RDoC, iSPOT‑D and biomarkers

(Edi­tor’s Note: this is Part 2 of the new 3‑part series writ­ten by Dr. Evian Gor­don draw­ing from his par­tic­i­pa­tion at the Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine World Con­gress on Jan­u­ary, 23, 2012 at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty.) Most Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine research in Psy­chi­a­try using mol­e­c­u­lar mea­sures alone have failed to repli­cate. Whilst dis­ap­point­ing, this is not sur­pris­ing, since 80%…

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