brain-development

Collaborative neuroimaging initiative BrainChart helps chart how brains change across the lifespan

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Source: Beth­le­hem et al (2020). A graph­i­cal sum­ma­ry of the nor­ma­tive tra­jec­to­ries of the medi­an (50th cen­tile) for each glob­al MRI phe­no­type, and key devel­op­men­tal mile­stones, as a func­tion of age (log-scaled).

For decades, growth charts have been used by pae­di­a­tri­cians as ref­er­ence tools. The charts allow health pro­fes­sion­als to plot and mea­sure a child’s height and weight from birth to young adult­hood. The per­centile scores they pro­vide, espe­cial­ly across mul­ti­ple vis­its, help doc­tors screen for con­di­tions such as obe­si­ty or inad­e­quate growth, which fall at the extremes of these scores.

Mean­while, it is pos­si­ble to mea­sure brain devel­op­ment with imag­ing tech­nolo­gies such as ultra­sound, mag­net­ic res­o­nance imag­ing (MRI) and com­put­erised tomog­ra­phy (CT). The devel­op­ment of these tech­nolo­gies has led to a wealth of research on how the brain changes, and each year, mil­lions of clin­i­cal brain scans are per­formed world­wide. Despite this progress, there are few mea­sures that are used to aid in mon­i­tor­ing brain devel­op­ment. Why? [Read more…] about Col­lab­o­ra­tive neu­roimag­ing ini­tia­tive Brain­Chart helps chart how brains change across the lifespan

The Do’s and Don’ts of Harnessing Technology (and Anxiety) for Good

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing impor­tant brain & men­tal health news plus a few fun brain teasers to test your rea­son­ing skills and more…

#1. Chal­lenge ahead: Har­ness­ing tech­nol­o­gy for good men­tal health

“Tech­nol­o­gy can not only help us grow out of unhealthy habits, it is also pos­si­ble to expand human men­tal capac­i­ties … although it will be nec­es­sary to ana­lyze “the how and when” of these uses: they must be eth­i­cal­ly sound and ensure that results are ben­e­fi­cial to soci­ety.” — our very own Álvaro Fer­nán­dez, hop­ing you all agree 🙂

If you pre­fer to read the arti­cle in Span­ish: Cómo hac­er de la tec­nología un ali­a­do en el cuida­do de la salud mental

#2. On neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty, young brains, and smartphones

“As with any tool, behav­ior, activ­i­ty, or tech­nol­o­gy, smart phones have the poten­tial to be either a use­ful and high­ly con­struc­tive asset or a destruc­tive and harm­ful diver­sion from life … What is the impact on brain devel­op­ment dur­ing the first 25 years of life when a sig­nif­i­cant part of each day is spent look­ing into a smart phone and the result­ing cog­ni­tive and emo­tion­al experiences?”

#3. Explor­ing links between hear­ing loss, demen­tia and the ‘cog­ni­tive reserve’ — plus the role of hear­ing aids

“Cer­tain types of demen­tia, par­tic­u­lar­ly vas­cu­lar demen­tia, are caused when there is less blood flow reach­ing the brain. This can dam­age our brain cells. Recent stud­ies have also shown that the parts of our brain that process sounds (our audi­to­ry sys­tem) have many blood ves­sels and are vul­ner­a­ble to dam­age … Anoth­er area of research is look­ing at whether hear­ing loss indi­rect­ly affects demen­tia risk by mak­ing it hard­er for peo­ple to stay con­nect­ed. Social iso­la­tion is anoth­er known risk fac­tor for dementia.”

#4. Com­put­er-assist­ed cog­ni­tive behav­ior ther­a­py (CCBT) may out­per­form Treat­ment as Usu­al (TAU) in help­ing patients reduce depres­sion, improve 6‑month remis­sion rates

“The find­ings of this ran­dom­ized clin­i­cal tri­al sug­gest that CCBT with a mod­est amount of clin­i­cian sup­port has poten­tial for wider-spread imple­men­ta­tion as an effec­tive, accept­able, and effi­cient treat­ment for depres­sion in pri­ma­ry care.”

#6. Wear­able EEG mon­i­tor­ing start-up Epi­tel rais­es $12.5M to mar­ket seizure detec­tion system

“It is time that EEGs for the brain become as acces­si­ble as EKGs for the heart to patients through­out the coun­try. For too long essen­tial neu­ro­log­i­cal ser­vices have been inac­ces­si­ble to large parts of our pop­u­la­tion” — Dr. Chaud­ery, Prin­ci­pal at Genoa Ven­tures (co-lead investor)

#7. Otsu­ka and Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty start-up Jol­ly Good sign $43M deal to pro­mote Social Skills Train­ing (SST) ther­a­pies, help­ing schiz­o­phre­nia patients first

“The com­bi­na­tion of SST and a phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal reg­i­men has been proven in stud­ies to reduce the recur­rence of men­tal dis­or­ders, the com­pa­nies said. Their first joint­ly devel­oped pro­gram will be direct­ed toward schiz­o­phre­nia patients, and they’re pre­dict­ing that the immer­sive nature of Jol­ly Good’s VR will make the SST ther­a­py more engag­ing and effec­tive than stan­dard methods.”

#8. Q&A with Dr. Wendy Suzu­ki on the parasym­pa­thet­ic ner­vous sys­tem and har­ness­ing anx­i­ety for good

“Most peo­ple have all heard of the fight-or-flight system—that’s the stress sys­tem, it makes your heart rate go up and you can run away real­ly fast. Well, peo­ple don’t real­ize that through evo­lu­tion in par­al­lel with the fight-or-flight sys­tem evolved an equal and oppo­site part of our ner­vous sys­tem that’s nick­named the “rest-and-digest” part of the ner­vous sys­tem, or parasym­pa­thet­ic ner­vous sys­tem. It’s basi­cal­ly the de-stress­ing part of our ner­vous sys­tem. That is what we need to acti­vate to bring our­selves back to equi­lib­ri­um when we’re in a stress­ful state.”

 

Final­ly, as promised, a few fun brain teasers to test your rea­son­ing skills–and more. Enjoy!

#9. Test your mem­o­ry and rea­son­ing skills with these proverbs

#10. Brain teas­er: Will you fin­ish your the­sis on time?

#11. Did you notice the jump? Good rea­son­ing and prob­lem-solv­ing often requires prop­er atten­tion to detail…

 

Wish­ing you and yours a healthy and safe March,

The Sharp­Brains Team

On neuroplasticity, young brains, and smartphones

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Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and Smart Phones (Psy­chi­atric Times):

In med­ical school, I was taught that the brain is hard­wired at birth. Dur­ing the past 30 years, neu­ro­science has defin­i­tive­ly shown that this is not the case at all. As our under­stand­ing of brain devel­op­ment advanced, it became clear that, dur­ing the first 3 years of life, neu­rons in the brain pro­lif­i­cal­ly form synap­tic con­nec­tions to be pre­pared for many diverse func­tion­al tasks, most of which it will nev­er encounter. From aged 3 years onward, the cir­cuits fre­quent­ly used strength­en their con­nec­tions while those serv­ing no func­tion are pruned away. Hence the com­mon phrase, “Neu­rons that fire togeth­er, wire togeth­er.” [Read more…] about On neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty, young brains, and smartphones

On brain folding and fitting 86 billion neurons inside our 1400 cc crania

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Brain fold­ing typ­i­cal­ly begins at the end of the. sec­ond trimester of preg­nan­cy and con­tin­ues after birth. Hiroshi Watanabe/DigitalVision via Get­ty Images

The human brain has been called the most com­plex object in the known uni­verse. And with good rea­son: It has around 86 bil­lion neu­rons and sev­er­al hun­dred thou­sand miles of axon fibers con­nect­ing them.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, the process of brain fold­ing that results in the brain’s char­ac­ter­is­tic bumps and grooves is also high­ly com­plex. Despite decades of spec­u­la­tion and research, the under­ly­ing mech­a­nism behind this process remains poor­ly under­stood. As bio­me­chan­ics and com­put­er sci­ence researchers, we have spent sev­er­al years study­ing the mechan­ics of brain fold­ing and ways to visu­al­ize and map the brain, respec­tive­ly. [Read more…] about On brain fold­ing and fit­ting 86 bil­lion neu­rons inside our 1400 cc crania

Great interview on bilingualism, sports, education and neuroplasticity — en español

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(trans­la­tion avail­able below)

Álvaro Fer­nán­dez Ibáñez: “La edu­cación bil­ingüe ayu­da a retrasar prob­le­mas cog­ni­tivos como el alzhéimer” (El Mundo):

PREGUNTA. ¿A qué se ded­i­can los neu­ro­con­sul­tores? ¿Qué relación tienen con la educación?

RESPUESTA. En los últi­mos años ha empeza­do a aumen­tar el interés por mejo­rar la capaci­dad del cere­bro. Al igual que las per­sonas quieren estar en bue­na for­ma físi­ca, se pre­ocu­pan tam­bién por estar en bue­na for­ma cog­ni­ti­va. Se habla cada vez más de con­sul­tores del cere­bro o entre­nadores men­tales y hay más actua­ciones basadas en la neu­ro­plas­ti­ci­dad. Esto se puede aplicar para ayu­dar a que los alum­nos apren­dan más. Por ejem­p­lo, la escuela Arrow­smith de Canadá tiene un pro­gra­ma de refuer­zo cog­ni­ti­vo para alum­nos con necesi­dades espe­ciales. Tam­bién está cre­cien­do mucho el mind­ful­ness para reducir el estrés de niños y pro­fe­sores. [Read more…] about Great inter­view on bilin­gual­ism, sports, edu­ca­tion and neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty — en español

Edutainment meets brain development…for good and for bad

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“In 1954, Walt Dis­ney was the first to envi­sion a new form of enter­tain­ment that meld­ed tra­di­tion­al fun and education—a form that he dubbed “edu­tain­ment.” By the lat­ter part of the 20th cen­tu­ry, this form had mor­phed into edu­ca­tion­al toys and games, a mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar indus­try that is pro­ject­ed to cap­ture a full 36 per­cent of the glob­al toy mar­ket share by 2022.

Nowhere is this trend more appar­ent than in the explo­sion of dig­i­tal apps: of the 2.2 mil­lion apps avail­able in the Apple Store, rough­ly 176,000—8.5 percent—are loose­ly des­ig­nat­ed as “ edu­ca­tion­al. ” Their growth con­tin­ues, with annu­al increas­es of 10 per­cent expect­ed through 2021. Whether called edu­tain­ment, edu­ca­tion­al toys, or the dig­i­tal learn­ing rev­o­lu­tion, this trend shares the implic­it phi­los­o­phy that mix­ing fun and learn­ing will offer a kind of “brain train­ing” that will enhance children’s think­ing and ampli­fy their learn­ing potential.

But there are many ques­tions before us. What do man­u­fac­tur­ers and mar­keters mean when they des­ig­nate a prod­uct “edu­ca­tion­al?” Keep read­ing Brain Train­ing for Kids: Adding a Human Touch over at the Dana Foundation.

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