biomarker

On mental fitness beliefs, lifestyles and new tools like apps, digital therapeutics, virtual reality, “brain age gaps” and more

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing time­ly brain & men­tal health news and a fun cou­ple of math brain teasers.

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

Beliefs mat­ter.

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

Def­i­n­i­tions matter.

#3. How ’sleep­ing on it’ can help the pre­frontal cor­tex reg­u­late emo­tion­al respons­es, mak­ing us feel bet­ter in the morning

Sleep mat­ters.

#4. NICE in the UK issues rec­om­men­da­tion for Sleepio app, the dig­i­tal cog­ni­tive behav­iour­al ther­a­py for insom­nia by Big Health

Inno­va­tion mat­ters: “At a price of £45 per per­son, Sleepio is cost sav­ing com­pared with usu­al treat­ment in pri­ma­ry care. This is based on an analy­sis of pri­ma­ry care resource use data before and after Sleepio was intro­duced in 9 GP prac­tices. Health­care costs were low­er at 1 year, most­ly because of few­er GP appoint­ments and sleep­ing pills prescribed.”

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

Lifestyle mat­ters: “The more com­plex our lives are, the more we need sim­ple things that can ground us and help us to be more resilient – to rebal­ance and rebal­ance and rebal­ance again. Build­ing the men­tal mus­cles to find bal­ance when one gets off bal­ance is a crit­i­cal skill thrive and to build cog­ni­tive reserve in our fast-chang­ing times. As our month­ly gath­er­ings showed us over the years, prac­tic­ing rebal­ance in good com­pa­ny not only rein­forces neur­al path­ways and capa­bil­i­ties but also strength­ens the bonds of trust and con­fi­dence that are invalu­able to build a healthy envi­ron­ment to thrive in.”

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

One of the ben­e­fits of VR is that patients know they are in a sim­u­la­tion, which enables “psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­tance from prob­lem­at­ic reac­tions,” the study authors wrote. “The process of find­ing the best uses and imple­men­ta­tion meth­ods of this immer­sive tech­nol­o­gy at scale in men­tal health is only beginning.”

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

“While all tech sec­tors received small­er fund­ing totals than the pre­vi­ous quar­ter, dig­i­tal health plunged much fur­ther than oth­ers did … investor inter­est in men­tal health tech wavered as the mar­ket and pub­lic com­pa­nies like Talk­space and Cere­bral come under scrutiny.”

#8. Deep learn­ing mod­el built on neu­roimag­ing data iden­ti­fies “Brain Age Gaps” as mark­ers of Alzheimer’s dis­ease (AD)

“The main find­ing of our study is that we could indeed find evi­dence that high brain age gap is behav­ing as an accel­er­at­ed brain aging bio­mark­er.” — Dr. David Jones, neu­rol­o­gist at Mayo Clinic

Final­ly, a cou­ple fun brain teasers to help you flex your math/ cog­ni­tive men­tal muscles:

#9. Will you fin­ish your the­sis on time?

#10. Math brain teas­er requir­ing no math — just per­cep­tion and cognition

 

Wish­ing you and yours a healthy and stim­u­lat­ing June!

Study: Personalized, closed-loop neuromodulation can (one day) become a “pacemaker for the brain”

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Click image above to watch 2‑minute video explain­ing the study

Treat­ing Severe Depres­sion with On-Demand Brain Stim­u­la­tion (UCSF press release):

UCSF Health physi­cians have suc­cess­ful­ly treat­ed a patient with severe depres­sion by tap­ping into the spe­cif­ic brain cir­cuit involved in depres­sive brain pat­terns and reset­ting them using the equiv­a­lent of a pace­mak­er for the brain.

“This study points the way to a new par­a­digm that is des­per­ate­ly need­ed in psy­chi­a­try,” said Andrew Krys­tal, PhD, pro­fes­sor of psy­chi­a­try and mem­ber of the UCSF Weill Insti­tute for Neu­ro­sciences. “We’ve devel­oped a pre­ci­sion-med­i­cine approach that has suc­cess­ful­ly man­aged our patient’s treat­ment-resis­tant depres­sion by iden­ti­fy­ing and mod­u­lat­ing the cir­cuit in her brain that’s unique­ly asso­ci­at­ed with her symp­toms.” [Read more…] about Study: Per­son­al­ized, closed-loop neu­ro­mod­u­la­tion can (one day) become a “pace­mak­er for the brain”

Study: Artificial intelligence program identifies linguistic markers that predict, with 70% accuracy, who gets Alzheimer’s Disease years later

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Fig. 3. Cook­ie-theft pic­ture descrip­tion task (CTT) exam­ples from the Fram­ing­ham Heart Study, includ­ing an unim­paired sam­ple (a), an impaired sam­ple (b), and an even more impaired sam­ple show­ing sig­nif­i­cant mis­spellings and min­i­mal gram­mat­ic com­plex­i­ty ©. Cred­it: Eyigoz et al (2020)

Alzheimer’s Pre­dic­tion May Be Found in Writ­ing Tests (The New York Times):

… the researchers looked at a group of 80 men and women in their 80s — half had Alzheimer’s and the oth­ers did not. But, sev­en and a half years ear­li­er, all had been cog­ni­tive­ly nor­mal. [Read more…] about Study: Arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence pro­gram iden­ti­fies lin­guis­tic mark­ers that pre­dict, with 70% accu­ra­cy, who gets Alzheimer’s Dis­ease years later

The latest on Brain Health and Resilience, plus a few fun Brain Teasers

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing fas­ci­nat­ing neu­ro­science find­ings and tips, com­bined with fun brain teasers.

#1. To cel­e­brate this quite-chal­leng­ing Thanks­giv­ing, here are five fun brain teasers that read­ers have enjoyed the most this year so far. It is always good to learn more about (and appre­ci­ate) that most pre­cious resource we all (yes, all) have up there! Five fun brain teasers to thank evo­lu­tion for our human brains and minds

#2. Want more? Ready, Set, Go! A few brain teasers to flex those cog­ni­tive muscles

#3. “[Breath­ing tech­niques] are allow­ing you to con­scious­ly take con­trol of your breath­ing so you can take con­trol of your ner­vous sys­tem so you can take con­trol of your anx­i­ety” — James Nestor, author of Breath: The New Sci­ence of a Lost Art. New book shares sci­ence and tech­niques to breathe bet­ter and pro­mote calm­ness not anxiety

#4. Voice does matter…especially in areas of poten­tial dis­agree­ment. To call, or to text, that is the (men­tal well-being) question

#5. Fas­ci­nat­ing research + inno­va­tion event brought by the Euro­pean Insti­tute of Inno­va­tion & Tech­nol­o­gy (EIT) and mul­ti­ple part­ners. Save the Date: Pro­mot­ing Brain Health for Life, Decem­ber 15–16th, online.

#6. “This isn’t a bat­tle between AI and doc­tors, it’s about how to opti­mize doc­tors’ abil­i­ty to deliv­er bet­ter care” — P. Murali Doraiswamy, direc­tor of the Neu­rocog­ni­tive Dis­or­ders Pro­gram at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty. Next: Ana­lyz­ing typ­ing speed, speech and sleep pat­terns to iden­ti­fy cog­ni­tive decline, demen­tia, Parkinson’s, and more

#7. Google’s X team shares 3 valu­able lessons learned from their ambi­tious and (for the time being) unsuc­cess­ful moon­shot: Alphabet’s X shares Amber EEG sys­tem to expand the quest for men­tal health biomarkers

#8. “An exer­cise pre­scrip­tion is an impor­tant treat­ment option and a great adjunct to med­ica­tions. The key is pre­scrib­ing phys­i­cal activ­i­ty in a way that the patient will com­ply and remain engaged with.” Debate: How should doc­tors pre­scribe exer­cise to ensure com­pli­ance and engagement?

#9. As the study authors note, “The expan­sion of women into the labor force in the mid-20th cen­tu­ry may have pro­vid­ed a new avenue of cog­ni­tive reserve for women via enhanced social stim­u­la­tion and cog­ni­tive engage­ment.” Study: Work in adult­hood seen to sig­nif­i­cant­ly delay mem­o­ry decline after age 60, sup­port­ing the Cog­ni­tive Reserve theory

#10. “Through­out many sub­red­dits, we found sig­nif­i­cant increas­es in the use of tokens relat­ed to iso­la­tion (eg, “lone­ly,” “can’t see any­one,” “quar­an­tine”), eco­nom­ic stress (eg, “rent,” “debt,” “pay the bills”), and home (“fridge,” “pet,” “lease”), and a decrease in the lex­i­con relat­ed to motion (eg, “walk,” “vis­it,” “trav­el”).” Hope­ful­ly the promis­ing vac­cine news helps turn the tide; until then we need to pro­mote men­tal health & resilience hard. Using Red­dit as a pop­u­la­tion-lev­el “men­tal health track­er” dur­ing the COVID pandemic

#11. “BCI devices can be non-inva­sive devices that users wear, or they can be inva­sive devices, which are sur­gi­cal­ly implant­ed,” says Veljko Dublje­vi … “The inva­sive devices are more effi­cient, since they can read sig­nals direct­ly from the brain. How­ev­er, they also raise more eth­i­cal con­cerns. For exam­ple, inva­sive BCI tech­nolo­gies car­ry more asso­ci­at­ed risks such as surgery, infec­tion, and glial scar­ring — and inva­sive BCI devices would be more dif­fi­cult to replace as tech­nol­o­gy improves.” Stud­ies iden­ti­fy key eth­i­cal con­cerns raised by inva­sive and non-inva­sive neurotechnologies

#12. “(the app) uses the Watch’s sen­sors to track the heart rate and move­ment of users as they sleep. After estab­lish­ing a base­line pro­file for the patient with­in one or two nights’ sleep, the machine learn­ing algo­rithm spots heart rate or move­ment abnor­mal­i­ties pre­sum­ably caused by a night­mare. The appli­ca­tion then vibrates the smart­watch just enough to inter­rupt the wearer’s dream­ing, but not enough to wake them up or dis­rupt their cir­ca­di­an sleep cycle.” FDA grants clear­ance for Night­Ware app designed to reduce PTSD-relat­ed nightmares

 

Wish­ing you a safe and healthy December,

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez and the Sharp­Brains Team

 

Alphabet’s X shares Amber EEG system to expand the quest for mental health biomarkers

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Amber’s final EEG pro­to­type: Head­set, sen­sor strip and bioamp

Alphabet’s X details Project Amber, a quest for a sin­gle bio­mark­er for depres­sion that fell short of its goal (TechCrunch):

Alphabet’s X (the Google-owner’s so-called “Moon­shot Fac­to­ry”) pub­lished a new blog post today about Project Amber, a project it’s been work­ing on over the past three years — the results of which it’s now mak­ing avail­able open source for the rest of the men­tal health research com­mu­ni­ty to learn from, and hope­ful­ly build upon. [Read more…] about Alphabet’s X shares Amber EEG sys­tem to expand the quest for men­tal health biomarkers

Nebraska football team developing 10-minute concussion test

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concussion_capNebras­ka to study con­cus­sions (ESPN):

“…the day is com­ing when a foot­ball play­er who takes a hit to the head will come to the side­line, take off his hel­met and slip on an elec­trode-cov­ered mesh cap [Read more…] about Nebras­ka foot­ball team devel­op­ing 10-minute con­cus­sion test