brain-activity

Study identifies cognitive benefits of ketamine in patients with treatment-resistant depression

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Ket­a­mine mol­e­cules attach them­selves to NMDA neu­ronal recep­tors, which play an impor­tant role in brain plas­tic­i­ty and pre­dic­tive pro­cess­ing. C22H31NO2, CC BY-SA

Which fac­tors deter­mine what we believe about our world, our­selves, our past, and our future? Cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science sug­gests that our beliefs are depen­dent on brain activ­i­ty, specif­i­cal­ly on the way our brains process sen­so­ry infor­ma­tion in order to make sense of our environment.

These beliefs (defined as prob­a­bil­i­ty esti­mates) are cen­tral to our brain’s pre­dic­tive pro­cess­ing func­tion, which enables it to pre­dict the prob­a­bilis­tic struc­ture of the world around us. These pre­dic­tions could even be the fun­da­men­tal build­ing blocks of men­tal states, such as per­cep­tions and emotions.

Many psy­chi­atric dis­or­ders, such as depres­sion and schiz­o­phre­nia, are char­ac­terised by irreg­u­lar beliefs whose ori­gins we still don’t ful­ly under­stand. But if we can iden­ti­fy the cere­bral sys­tems gov­ern­ing them, we could tar­get those very areas in a bid to alle­vi­ate the pain asso­ci­at­ed to these ill­ness­es. [Read more…] about Study iden­ti­fies cog­ni­tive ben­e­fits of ket­a­mine in patients with treat­ment-resis­tant depression

Beacon Biosignals raises $27M to scale EEG, AI-based neurobiomarker discovery platform

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Neu­rotech start­up Bea­con Biosig­nals scores $27M to bring AI to EEG analy­sis (Med­C­i­ty News):

Elec­troen­cephalog­ra­phy is a decades-old tech­nique for cap­tur­ing brain activ­i­ty, data that are used to eval­u­ate brain dis­or­ders. Bea­con Biosig­nals is apply­ing arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to these tests, and the neu­rotech­nol­o­gy start­up has found a ready mar­ket in phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies inter­est­ed in assess­ing how their exper­i­men­tal brain ther­a­pies are work­ing. Now Bea­con Biosig­nals has some­thing else: $27 mil­lion in financ­ing. [Read more…] about Bea­con Biosig­nals rais­es $27M to scale EEG, AI-based neu­ro­bio­mark­er dis­cov­ery platform

Becoming better mind-wanderers to boost problem-solving and mood

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I’m a big believ­er in day­dream­ing now and then—especially when I’m out hik­ing. There’s some­thing about being in nature that helps me let go of dai­ly cares and allows my mind to wan­der where it will, which feels great and often jump­starts my cre­ativ­i­ty as a writer and musician.

I admit, though, I’ve been trou­bled by research show­ing how mind-wan­der­ing could make me less pro­duc­tive or depressed—the last thing I need! But it turns out this gap between per­son­al expe­ri­ence and sci­ence may best be explained by how researchers have lumped togeth­er dif­fer­ent kinds of mind-wan­der­ing. Not all research has dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed between depres­sive rumi­na­tion (like replay­ing an ongo­ing dis­agree­ment with our spouse in our minds) and pleas­ant day­dream­ing (let­ting our minds wan­der freely). [Read more…] about Becom­ing bet­ter mind-wan­der­ers to boost prob­lem-solv­ing and mood

Let’s anticipate the potential misuse of neurological data to minimize the risks–and maximize the benefits

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The per­ils of open­ing the mind (Boston Globe):

“For­get the joy­stick. Today you can use your mind alone to nav­i­gate vir­tu­al envi­ron­ments or fly real-world drones. You can buy sleek head­bands that read your brain sig­nals and help you med­i­tate or stay focused. Or you can get them for your kids to make sure they’re work­ing, not day­dream­ing [Read more…] about Let’s antic­i­pate the poten­tial mis­use of neu­ro­log­i­cal data to min­i­mize the risks–and max­i­mize the benefits

Machine-learning study finds EEG brain signatures that predict response to antidepressant treatments

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Brain-wave pat­tern can iden­ti­fy peo­ple like­ly to respond to anti­de­pres­sant, study finds (Stan­ford Med­i­cine press release):

“A new method of inter­pret­ing brain activ­i­ty could poten­tial­ly be used in clin­ics to help deter­mine the best treat­ment options for depres­sion, accord­ing to a study led by researchers at the Stan­ford School of Medicine.

Stan­ford researchers and their col­lab­o­ra­tors used elec­troen­cephalog­ra­phy, a tool for mon­i­tor­ing elec­tri­cal activ­i­ty in the brain, and an algo­rithm to iden­ti­fy a brain-wave sig­na­ture in [Read more…] about Machine-learn­ing study finds EEG brain sig­na­tures that pre­dict response to anti­de­pres­sant treatments

U.S. Army develops novel way to analyze brain imaging data and shape emerging non-invasive neurotechnology

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Aggre­gate dis­tri­b­u­tion of cor­ti­cal brain-wave activ­i­ty, orga­nized by stan­dard fre­quen­cy bands, across a range of depths. Cred­it: U.S. Army

Army devel­ops big data approach to neu­ro­science (press release):

“A big data approach to neu­ro­science promis­es to sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve our under­stand­ing of the rela­tion­ship between brain activ­i­ty and performance.

To date, there have been rel­a­tive­ly few attempts to use a big-data approach with­in the emerg­ing field of neu­rotech­nol­o­gy. [Read more…] about U.S. Army devel­ops nov­el way to ana­lyze brain imag­ing data and shape emerg­ing non-inva­sive neurotechnology