Shape your environment, shape your mind

By Greater Good Science Center | April 23, 2021

One of the biggest con­trib­u­tors to our hap­pi­ness is some­thing we bare­ly pay atten­tion to: the voice inside our own heads. As psy­chol­o­gist Ethan Kross describes in his new book Chat­ter, that voice is con­stant­ly ana­lyz­ing the sit­u­a­tions we’re in, reflect­ing on the past and future, and telling us who we are. While some­times friend­ly and…

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Neuroimaging, big data and mental health: A survey of the land

By SharpBrains | January 15, 2021

Men­tal and degen­er­a­tive dis­or­ders are among the most cost­ly and com­mon caus­es of dis­abil­i­ty in soci­ety today. Because the brain is the most com­plex organ in the human body, diag­nos­ing and treat­ing prob­lems when things go wrong pos­es enor­mous chal­lenges. Even before the 1990s was des­ig­nat­ed the Decade of the Brain, the poten­tial of neuroimaging—the…

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Machine learning study finds standardized brain scan biomarker to detect depression with 66% accuracy

By SharpBrains | January 6, 2021

New Study Brings Bio­mark­ers For Depres­sion Clos­er To The Clin­ic (Forbes): Sci­en­tists have been study­ing bio­log­i­cal signs of depres­sion in the brain, look­ing for mark­ers that could be used to iden­ti­fy the dis­or­der. A team of sci­en­tists recent­ly devel­oped a tech­nique using machine learn­ing that can iden­ti­fy whether a giv­en patien­t’s brain scan shows one…

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Update: Understanding Brain Health via Cosmological Health, and vice versa

By SharpBrains | December 29, 2020

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing fas­ci­nat­ing find­ings, books and resources for life­long brain health. #1. “The human brain (sec­tion; left image above) func­tions thanks to its wide neu­ronal net­work that is deemed to con­tain approx­i­mate­ly 69 bil­lion neu­rons. On the oth­er hand, the observ­able uni­verse (sec­tion sim­u­la­tion; right image) can count…

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Update: The placebo effect works even when people know they are taking a placebo

By Alvaro Fernandez | August 27, 2020

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing 14 research find­ings, resources and tips for brain health … and start­ing with this fas­ci­nat­ing study: #1. Wow. The place­bo effect works even when peo­ple know they are tak­ing a place­bo #2. Beat­ing Alzheimer’s Dis­ease will require a com­bined physical/ men­tal approach: From the ten fac­tors found…

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Higher body mass index (BMI) linked to lower blood supply to the brain in large neuroimaging study

By SharpBrains | August 7, 2020

Body weight has sur­pris­ing, alarm­ing impact on brain func­tion (Sci­ence Dai­ly): As a per­son­’s weight goes up, all regions of the brain go down in activ­i­ty and blood flow, accord­ing to a new brain imag­ing study in the Jour­nal of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease … sci­en­tists ana­lyzed over 35,000 func­tion­al neu­roimag­ing scans using sin­­gle-pho­­ton emis­sion com­put­er­ized tomog­ra­phy (SPECT) from…

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