New Series on Personalized Medicine and the Brain (PMWC 2012)

On aver­age, the med­ica­tions pre­scribed for brain-relat­ed con­di­tions ben­e­fit approx­i­mate­ly 50% of patients.  But which 50%?.” “We need unam­bigu­ous bio­mark­ers that are clin­i­cal­ly rel­e­vant and scal­able at rea­son­able cost. They already exist in Can­cer.   But they do not yet exist in the Brain.” What may change that?

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Update: On Brain Training, Positive Psychology and the FDA

Time for the Sep­tem­ber edi­tion of the month­ly Sharp­Brains eNewslet­ter, start­ing with a good brief New Sci­en­tist arti­cle, Mak­er of cog­ni­tive train­ing game seeks FDA approval: Imag­ine walk­ing away from a doctor’s office with a pre­scrip­tion to play a video game. Brain Plas­tic­ity, the devel­oper of a cog­ni­tive train­ing game, has begun talks with the Food and…

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Study: Cognitive Markers or Biomarkers to manage Cognitive Health across the Lifespan?

Pre­dict­ing Alzheimer’s Dis­ease More Accu­rate Through Cog­ni­tive Changes Than Bio­mark­ers (Med­ical News): “Mea­sur­ing peo­ple’s changes in cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties is a bet­ter pre­dic­tor of Alzheimer’s dis­ease than changes in bio­mark­ers, researchers from the Ben­i­to Men­ni Com­plex Assis­ten­cial en Salut Men­tal, Barcelona, Spain, report­ed in Archives of Gen­er­al Psy­chi­a­try, a JAMA jour­nal.” “The inves­ti­ga­tors used a range of…

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Pooling data to accelerate Alzheimer’s research

Very inter­est­ing arti­cle in the New York Times on the rea­sons behind grow­ing research of how to detect Alzheimer’s Dis­ease: Rare Shar­ing of Data Leads to Progress on Alzheimer’s (New York Times)  (Sit­u­a­tion before) Sci­en­tists were look­ing for bio­mark­ers, but they were not get­ting very far. “The prob­lem in the field was that you had many different…

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