Good profile of pioneer Dr. Thomas Insel, NIMH Director

By Alvaro Fernandez | February 4, 2014

Blaz­ing Trails in Brain Sci­ence (The New York Times): “The pen­du­lum has swung so far toward drug ther­a­py in recent years that it is hard to recap­ture how dis­rup­tive those 1980 stud­ies were. Dr. Insel’s work and that of many oth­ers, test­ing the effect of new med­ica­tions, would turn the field away from long-term talk­ing cures…

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Cognitive therapy or medication? Brain scans may help personalize treatments

By SharpBrains | September 7, 2012

Pre­dict­ing How Patients Respond to Ther­a­py (press release): “A new study led by MIT neu­ro­sci­en­tists has found that brain scans of patients with social anx­i­ety dis­or­der can help pre­dict whether they will ben­e­fit from cog­ni­tive behav­ioral therapy…Social anx­i­ety is usu­al­ly treat­ed with either cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py or med­ica­tions. However,

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Update: Harness Neuroplasticity with Enthusiasm, Exercise & Personalized Medicine

By Alvaro Fernandez | February 28, 2012

Time for Sharp­Brains’ Feb­ru­ary 2012 eNewslet­ter, fea­tur­ing in this occa­sion mul­ti­ple and com­ple­men­tary per­spec­tives on how to har­ness neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty: with enthu­si­asm, BOTH phys­i­cal AND cog­ni­tive exer­cise, and (once tools become bet­ter stan­dard­ized and wide­ly avail­able) brain-based per­son­al­ized med­i­cine. Fea­tured Per­spec­tives: To Har­ness Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty, Start with Enthu­si­asm, by Dr. Hele­na Popovic Q&A with Dr. Yaakov Stern on Brain Reserve,…

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Working with Healthcare Stakeholders towards Brain-Based Personalized Medicine

By Dr. Evian Gordon | February 27, 2012

(Edi­tor’s Note: this is Part 3 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.) Work­ing with Health Care Indus­try Stake­hold­ers: Clin­i­cians, Pharma/Biotech, Pay­ers, PBMs, Lawyers, Medicare, FDA Clin­i­cians seek clear val­i­dat­ed “rules of thumb” that can be…

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

By Dr. Evian Gordon | February 20, 2012

(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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The State of Personalized Medicine: The Role of Biomarkers

By Dr. Evian Gordon | February 13, 2012

(Edi­tor’s Note: this is Part 1 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.) On aver­age, the med­ica­tions pre­scribed for brain-relat­ed con­di­tions ben­e­fit approx­i­mate­ly 50% of patients. But which 50%? Per­son­al­ized Med­i­cine seeks to move away from…

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