Study: Consumer wearable devices tend to measure some metrics well (heart rate, cardiorespiratory fitness) but others not so well (energy expenditure, sleep quality)

By The Conversation | September 4, 2024 |

Back in 2010, Gary Wolf, then the edi­tor of Wired mag­a­zine, deliv­ered a TED talk in Cannes called “the quan­ti­fied self”. It was about what he termed a “new fad” among tech enthu­si­asts. These ear­ly adopters were using gad­gets to mon­i­tor every­thing from their phys­i­o­log­i­cal data to their mood, and even the num­ber of nappies…

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Neuroimaging study shows how being “in the zone” requires intensive practice first and then learning to surrender

By The Conversation | April 16, 2024

Flow, or being “in the zone,” is a state of amped-up cre­ativ­i­ty, enhanced pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and bliss­ful con­scious­ness that, some psy­chol­o­gists believe, is also the secret to hap­pi­ness. It’s con­sid­ered the brain’s fast track to suc­cess in busi­ness, the arts or any oth­er field. But in order to achieve flow, a per­son must first devel­op a strong…

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Time for a universal “exercise prescription” for kids and adults to boost cognition and mental health?

By SharpBrains | August 31, 2023 |

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing this time a range of brain research find­ings, tools and con­tro­ver­sies plus some brain teasers to chal­lenge your (and our) work­ing mem­o­ry. #1. Major evi­dence review sup­ports an “exer­cise pre­scrip­tion” for most adults to boost men­tal health “High­er inten­si­ty phys­i­cal activ­i­ty was asso­ci­at­ed with greater improvements”…

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Just-published Apple patent signals aim to measure brain activity using AirPods sensor system

By SharpBrains | July 26, 2023

Apple Invents a next-gen­er­a­­tion Air­Pods Sen­sor Sys­tem that could mea­sure Biosig­nals and Elec­tri­cal Activ­i­ty of a User’s brain (Patent­ly Apple): Today the US Patent & Trade­mark Office pub­lished a patent appli­ca­tion from Apple that relates to a next-gen­er­a­­tion of Air­Pods Sen­sor Sys­tem where­in the hous­ing and tips of Air­Pods could include a num­ber of active and…

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

By The Conversation | December 8, 2022

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…

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

By SharpBrains | November 17, 2021

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…

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