cognition

Alto Neuroscience raises $60M (equity + credit) to help fix the “trial and error” approach to psychiatric medication

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Alto Neu­ro­science bags $25M for four Phase II drugs (End­points News):

Anoth­er $25 mil­lion is flow­ing the way of a Cal­i­for­nia biotech attempt­ing to fix the “tri­al and error” sys­tem in neu­ro­science drug R&D.

Alto Neu­ro­science picked up the cap­i­tal from Alpha Wave Ven­tures via an exten­sion to its Series B, bring­ing total equi­ty raised to $100 mil­lion since the startup’s 2019 found­ing. [Read more…] about Alto Neu­ro­science rais­es $60M (equi­ty + cred­it) to help fix the “tri­al and error” approach to psy­chi­atric medication

Ballroom dancing can reduce aging-related brain atrophy in the hippocampus (and, more than treadmill walking!)

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Social ball­room danc­ing can improve cog­ni­tive func­tions and reduce brain atro­phy in old­er adults who are at increased risk for Alzheimer’s dis­ease and oth­er forms of demen­tia. That’s the key find­ing of my team’s recent­ly pub­lished study in the Jour­nal of Aging and Phys­i­cal Activity.

In our study, we enrolled 25 adults over 65 years of age in either six months of twice-week­ly ball­room danc­ing class­es or six months of twice-week­ly tread­mill walk­ing class­es. None of them were engaged in for­mal danc­ing or oth­er exer­cise pro­grams. [Read more…] about Ball­room danc­ing can reduce aging-relat­ed brain atro­phy in the hip­pocam­pus (and, more than tread­mill walking!)

Taking your brain vitals: Stories from a techno-optimist inventing the future of human performance

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Dr. Cori Lath­an, author of Invent­ing the Future: Sto­ries from a Techno-Optimist

For as long as I can remem­ber, my father loved act­ing. Into his six­ties and ear­ly sev­en­ties, he was quite active in the the­ater. He played Tartuffe in Molière’s Tartuffe, Nick Bot­tom in Shakespeare’s A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream, and the Old Man in Steve Martin’s Picas­so at the Lapin Agile. When he won the role of Scrooge in a local pro­duc­tion of Dickens’s A Christ­mas Car­ol, I was so excit­ed for him that I bought tick­ets way before open­ing night. But he was hav­ing trou­ble remem­ber­ing his lines. Even­tu­al­ly, the direc­tor had to let him go.

To find out what was going on, my mom and dad went to his pri­ma­ry care physi­cian, who referred him to a neu­rol­o­gist. After wait­ing a month for that appoint­ment, the neu­rol­o­gist told Dad to see a neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist, who was booked anoth­er three months out. When that appoint­ment arrived, the neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist gave him a vari­ety of cog­ni­tive tests, includ­ing writ­ten, ver­bal, and com­put­er based. After anoth­er month, the neu­rol­o­gist called us back in and told my father, “You have mild cog­ni­tive impairment.”

“No shit, Sher­lock,” I thought. “That’s why we went to see his doc­tor six months ago.” The neu­rol­o­gist then dis­cussed my father’s oth­er health issues with us, which includ­ed car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, sleep apnea, type 2 dia­betes, and by that point, depres­sion. I then had an inspi­ra­tion. “Dad, when was the last time you used your CPAP machine?” He admit­ted sheep­ish­ly, “I don’t use it. I don’t like it.” [Read more…] about Tak­ing your brain vitals: Sto­ries from a tech­no-opti­mist invent­ing the future of human performance

Study: Building cognitive reserve helps delay memory and thinking decline regardless of genetic or childhood markers

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Source: UAB researcher David Vance

Build­ing cog­ni­tive reserve could pro­tect against mem­o­ry and think­ing decline, even with low child­hood cog­ni­tion scores (Alzheimer’s Research UK):

New research sug­gests that peo­ple who devel­op high ‘cog­ni­tive reserve’ by the time they reach 69 years old may reduce their like­li­hood of mem­o­ry and think­ing decline, even with low child­hood cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties. The study was pub­lished today in Neu­rol­o­gy, the med­ical jour­nal of the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Neu­rol­o­gy. [Read more…] about Study: Build­ing cog­ni­tive reserve helps delay mem­o­ry and think­ing decline regard­less of genet­ic or child­hood markers

Q&A with researcher Robb Rutledge on mental health, expectations, decision-making and, yes, holiday planning!

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Have you ever looked for­ward to a con­cert, beach vaca­tion, or par­ty only to find your­self not enjoy­ing it as much as you thought you would?

You may be suf­fer­ing from over­ly high expec­ta­tions, says psy­chol­o­gist Robb Rut­ledge of Yale Uni­ver­si­ty. Rut­ledge and his col­leagues have been using smart­phone-based data col­lec­tion (via a free app called Hap­pi­ness Quest, where any­one can play short games and con­tribute to research) to see how our expec­ta­tions affect our future hap­pi­ness. Some of their find­ings point to nov­el approach­es for increas­ing our enjoy­ment of every­day life. [Read more…] about Q&A with researcher Robb Rut­ledge on men­tal health, expec­ta­tions, deci­sion-mak­ing and, yes, hol­i­day planning!

Update: Playing videogames may be more cognitively beneficial than other forms of screentime like social media, watching videos/ TV

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Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing time­ly brain & men­tal health news and a fun brain teas­er to put your tem­po­ral lobes to good use 🙂

#1. Study finds that play­ing videogames may be more cog­ni­tive­ly ben­e­fi­cial for chil­dren than oth­er forms of screen­time (social media, watch­ing videos/ TV)

“Here, we esti­mat­ed the impact of dif­fer­ent types of screen time (watch­ing, social­iz­ing, or gam­ing) on children’s intel­li­gence while con­trol­ling for the con­found­ing effects of genet­ic dif­fer­ences in cog­ni­tion and socioe­co­nom­ic sta­tus … Broad­ly, our results are in line with research on the mal­leabil­i­ty of cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties from envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors, such as cog­ni­tive train­ing and the Fly­nn effect.”

Fas­ci­nat­ing! Hav­ing said that…

#2. Large neu­roimag­ing study finds social iso­la­tion to be an ear­ly indi­ca­tor of increased demen­tia risk

“Social inter­ac­tion is huge­ly impor­tant. One study found that the size of our social group is actu­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the vol­ume of the orbitofrontal cor­tex (involved in social cog­ni­tion and emo­tion). But how many friends do we need? … It is hard to argue with the fact that humans are social ani­mals and gain enjoy­ment from con­nect­ing with oth­ers, what­ev­er age we are. But, as we are increas­ing­ly uncov­er­ing, it also cru­cial for the health of our cognition.”

#3. UC study finds near-trans­fer of cog­ni­tive train­ing to be nec­es­sary (yet not suf­fi­cient) for far-trans­fer, broad­er benefits

“Some peo­ple do very well in train­ing, such as play­ing a video game, but they don’t show near trans­fer, per­haps because they are using high­ly spe­cif­ic strate­gies,” said first author Anja Pahor … “For these peo­ple, far trans­fer is unlike­ly. By bet­ter under­stand­ing why this type of mem­o­ry train­ing or ‘inter­ven­tion’ works for some peo­ple but not oth­ers, we can move for­ward with a new gen­er­a­tion of work­ing-mem­o­ry train­ing games or use approach­es that are more tai­lored to indi­vid­u­als’ needs”

#4. Please help us recruit 30,000 adults for a UC Cit­i­zen Sci­ence project on cog­ni­tive training

“In our ongo­ing large-scale study (note: the one right above) we aim to recruit 30,000 adults who are moti­vat­ed and will­ing to help us bet­ter under­stand the fac­tors that under­lie learn­ing out­comes using a vari­ety of train­ing par­a­digms and out­come mea­sures. Our endeav­or will ulti­mate­ly con­tribute to the per­son­al­iza­tion of cog­ni­tive train­ing so that, hope­ful­ly, any­one who would like to improve their cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing will be able to choose the approach that may fit them best.” — researchers Susanne Jaeg­gi, Anja Pahor, Aaron Seitz @ UC Irvine/ Riverside

#5. Trend: Esports teams har­ness cog­ni­tive tests to bet­ter match play­er to task and to iden­ti­fy train­ing opportunities

Esports are bor­row­ing a page from Pro Sports’ book … we would­n’t be sur­prised to see the inverse tak­ing place too in just a few years.

#6. Dos and Don’ts of Ther­a­py on the Go: Nav­i­gat­ing the use of apps for men­tal health care

“For those with­out severe men­tal ill­ness, app-based ther­a­py may be help­ful in match­ing clients with a pro­fes­sion­al famil­iar with a range of prob­lems and stres­sors. This makes apps attrac­tive to those with anx­i­ety and mild to mod­er­ate depres­sion. They also appeal to peo­ple who wouldn’t ordi­nar­i­ly seek out office-based ther­a­py, but who want help with life issues such as mar­i­tal prob­lems and work-relat­ed stress.”

#7. AI-enabled chat­bot Wysa receives FDA Break­through Device des­ig­na­tion for patients with chron­ic pain, depres­sion and anxiety

Let’s talk!

#8. And here’s the Brain Teas­er: Ready to stim­u­late those neu­rons in your tem­po­ral lobes?

 

Wish­ing you and yours a healthy and fun summer!