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cognitive-behavioral-therapy

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

June 6, 2022 by SharpBrains Leave a Comment

AI Behav­ior Health Chat­bot App Fast-Tracked by FDA (Psy­chol­o­gy Today):

Recent­ly the U.S. Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion (FDA) grant­ed break­through device des­ig­na­tion to Wysa’s AI-based dig­i­tal men­tal health con­ver­sa­tion­al agent that deliv­ers cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py (CBT) via a smart­phone to adults suf­fer­ing from depres­sion, anx­i­ety, and chron­ic mus­cu­loskele­tal pain [Read more…] about AI-enabled chat­bot Wysa receives FDA Break­through Device des­ig­na­tion for patients with chron­ic pain, depres­sion and anxiety

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: anxiety, artificial intelligence, CBT, chronic musculoskeletal pain, cognitive-behavioral-therapy, depression, digital mental health, FDA, Food and Drug Administration, mental health industry, smartphone, Wysa

Headspace Health acquires AI-driven digital mental health start-up Sayana

January 18, 2022 by SharpBrains

JPM 2022: Head­space Health grabs start­up Sayana to build out AI-based men­tal health tools (Fierce Healthcare):

Six months after the $3 bil­lion merg­er with Gin­ger, Head­space Health acquired Sayana, an AI-dri­ven men­tal health and well­ness company.

Sayana will expand Head­space Health’s abil­i­ty to pro­vide per­son­al­ized self-care con­tent to its 100 mil­lion users, exec­u­tives said … Head­space lever­ages AI to pow­er a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of the care the com­pa­ny deliv­ers, [Rus­sell Glass, CEO, Head­space Health] said dur­ing the JPM con­fer­ence, includ­ing using nat­ur­al lan­guage pro­cess­ing to extract infor­ma­tion from the chats, to sum­ma­rize coach notes and care infor­ma­tion and to mon­i­tor for sui­ci­dal­i­ty … [Read more…] about Head­space Health acquires AI-dri­ven dig­i­tal men­tal health start-up Sayana

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: acceptance commitment therapy, AI-driven mental health, breathing exercises, cognitive-behavioral-therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy, digital mental health, Ginger, Headspace Health, Sayana

The American Medical Association’s (AMA) to ease access to remote Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Monitoring

November 8, 2021 by SharpBrains

The Dig­i­tal Ther­a­peu­tics Alliance Wel­comes Deci­sion by the CPT® Edi­to­r­i­al Pan­el to Clar­i­fy Report­ing of Remote Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Ther­a­py Mon­i­tor­ing Ser­vices (press release):

As the lead­ing inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tion on dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tic thought lead­er­ship and edu­ca­tion, the Dig­i­tal Ther­a­peu­tics Alliance (DTA) wel­comes the Amer­i­can Med­ical Association’s (AMA) Cur­rent Pro­ce­dur­al Ter­mi­nol­o­gy (CPT®) Edi­to­r­i­al Pan­el’s recent deci­sion to clar­i­fy report­ing of remote cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py (CBT) mon­i­tor­ing ser­vices. The changes to the CPT code set reflect the grow­ing recog­ni­tion that dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics (DTx) are an effec­tive treat­ment for patients with men­tal health con­di­tions and physi­cians should ulti­mate­ly be reim­bursed for their time spent pre­scrib­ing, mon­i­tor­ing, and sup­ply­ing online CBT tech­nolo­gies. [Read more…] about The Amer­i­can Med­ical Association’s (AMA) to ease access to remote Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Ther­a­py Monitoring

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: American-Medical-Association, cognitive-behavioral-therapy, Cognito Therapeutics, digital therapeutics, Digital Therapeutics Alliance, online CBT, remote cognitive behavioral therapy

On physical activity, neuroplasticity, depression, screen time, neuromodulation and more

October 29, 2021 by SharpBrains

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains’ e‑newsletter, fea­tur­ing this time eight sci­en­tif­ic reports and indus­try resources plus a few fun brain teasers.

#1. Study finds ulti­mate hack to pro­tect teen brains from harm­ful screen time: Exer­cise (and good role-mod­el­ing):

“Girls who spent less than an hour on screens and boys who spent less than 90 min­utes on screens were not neg­a­tive­ly impact­ed by it. But at high­er amounts of screen time, their life sat­is­fac­tion dropped significantly—they were less hap­py with their lives, and it got worse the more time they spent … (the) study also found that teens who got more reg­u­lar exer­cise had greater life sat­is­fac­tion and few­er phys­i­cal com­plaints for both gen­ders. Not only that, the effects were large­ly unre­lat­ed to how much time a teen spent on screens, so that if teens exer­cised more, it could poten­tial­ly undo the dam­age to their well-being that went along with even six or eight hours of screen time.”

#2. Stud­ies find grow­ing evi­dence link­ing weight, phys­i­cal activ­i­ty, neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and depres­sion:

‘Obe­si­ty and depres­sion are both major glob­al health chal­lenges, and our study pro­vides the most robust evi­dence to date that high­er BMI caus­es depres­sion,’ said lead author Jess O’Loughlin. ‘Under­stand­ing whether phys­i­cal or social fac­tors are respon­si­ble for this rela­tion­ship can help inform effec­tive strate­gies to improve men­tal health and wellbeing.’

#3. Dr. Judith Beck on the future of cog­ni­tive ther­a­py and psy­chother­a­py:

Let’s hope! — “I think Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Ther­a­py (CBT) will con­tin­ue to be adapt­ed for more prob­lems, diag­noses, and con­di­tions. We will train many kinds of care­givers, teach­ers, front-line work­ers, police, and even politicians.”

#4. Ratio­nal­i­ty doesn’t equal effi­cien­cy: Cell­phone data shows how we nav­i­gate cities:

“We dis­cov­ered that the most pre­dic­tive mod­el – rep­re­sent­ing the most com­mon mode of city nav­i­ga­tion – was not the quick­est path, but instead one that tried to min­i­mize the angle between the direc­tion a per­son is mov­ing and the line from the per­son to their des­ti­na­tion … Evo­lu­tion is a sto­ry of trade-offs, not opti­miza­tions, and the cog­ni­tive load of cal­cu­lat­ing a per­fect path rather than rely­ing on the sim­pler point­ing method might not be worth a few saved min­utes. After all, ear­ly humans had to pre­serve brain pow­er for dodg­ing stam­ped­ing ele­phants, just like peo­ple today might need to focus on avoid­ing aggres­sive SUVs.”

#5. Trend: Har­ness­ing dig­i­tal tech to improve men­tal health and well­ness:

“Designed with the help of Dutch aca­d­e­m­ic Isabela Granic … the game is cen­tred around an avatar who stays in bed for the day and aims to relax play­ers by using sooth­ing music, mut­ed colours and self-care prac­tices. Think med­i­ta­tive tasks such as word games and guid­ed breath­ing exer­cis­es. There’s no way to win, com­pete or binge – in fact, it delib­er­ate­ly starts to feel bor­ing after a few min­utes of play, which dis­in­cen­tivizes mind­less scrolling. #Self­Care was an instant hit, gar­ner­ing half a mil­lion down­loads in its first six weeks with­out any advertising…”

#6. Study: Per­son­al­ized, closed-loop neu­ro­mod­u­la­tion can (one day) become a “pace­mak­er for the brain”:

“What made this proof-of-prin­ci­ple tri­al suc­cess­ful was the dis­cov­ery of a neur­al bio­mark­er – a spe­cif­ic pat­tern of brain activ­i­ty that indi­cates the onset of symp­toms – and the team’s abil­i­ty to cus­tomize a new DBS device to respond only when it rec­og­nizes that pat­tern. The device then stim­u­lates a dif­fer­ent area of the brain cir­cuit, cre­at­ing on-demand, imme­di­ate ther­a­py that is unique to both the patient’s brain and the neur­al cir­cuit caus­ing her illness.”

#7. Six guide­lines to nav­i­gate the Aduhelm con­tro­ver­sy and (hope­ful­ly) help patients with Mild Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment and ear­ly-stage Alzheimer’s Dis­ease:

“After ini­tial­ly indi­cat­ing that Aduhelm could be pre­scribed to any­one with demen­tia, the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion now spec­i­fies that the pre­scrip­tion drug be giv­en to indi­vid­u­als with mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment or ear­ly-stage Alzheimer’s, the groups in which the med­ica­tion was studied.
Yet this nar­row­er rec­om­men­da­tion rais­es ques­tions. What does a diag­no­sis of mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment mean? Is Aduhelm appro­pri­ate for all peo­ple with mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment, or only some? And who should decide which patients qual­i­fy for treat­ment: demen­tia spe­cial­ists or pri­ma­ry care physicians?”

#8. The Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion (FTC) hard­ens data secu­ri­ty rules for health apps and devices:

“With data breach­es on the rise, the FTC is look­ing to make health apps more account­able for telling patients when their data has been exposed.”
And here are a few of our favorite brain teasers, in case you missed them…
  • Cel­e­brate Hal­loween with nine great riddles
  • Test your stress lev­el with this quick brain teaser
  • Where’s the baby?
  • Learn about cog­ni­tion and men­tal self-rotation

 

Wish­ing you and yours a sweet Hal­loween and a healthy month of November,

The Sharp­Brains Team

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning, Peak Performance, SharpBrains Monthly eNewsletter, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Aduhelm, Brain Teasers, CBT, cognitive load, cognitive-behavioral-therapy, cognitive-therapy, depression, digital health, digital tech, early-stage Alzheimer’s, exercise, FTC, mild-cognitive-impairment, neural biomarker, neural circuit, neuromodulation, neuroplasticity, obesity, pacemaker for the brain, Physical-activity, Psychotherapy, screen time, weight

Dr. Judith Beck on the future of cognitive therapy and psychotherapy

October 11, 2021 by SharpBrains

Dr. Awais Aftab: What do you think the future of psy­chother­a­py is? What would you like it to be?

Dr. Judith Beck: A num­ber of years ago, a col­league asked my dad whether he expect­ed cog­ni­tive ther­a­py to even­tu­al­ly dom­i­nate the field of psy­chother­a­py. He respond­ed, “I hope good ther­a­py even­tu­al­ly dom­i­nates the field of psy­chother­a­py. Just good ther­a­py.” My father has always said, and I agree, that if sig­nif­i­cant research demon­strates greater sup­port for the the­o­ret­i­cal frame­work and treat­ment of a dif­fer­ent psy­chother­a­py, then that psy­chother­a­py should sup­plant CBT. So far that has not hap­pened. To the con­trary, as the years have gone by, there is more and more sup­port for CBT con­cep­tu­al­ly and in treat­ment efficacy.

In terms of the future of CBT, I think we will con­tin­ue to use research from oth­er fields (such as neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gy, evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gy, and cog­ni­tive sci­ence) to refine the­o­ry and guide ther­a­py. We will con­tin­ue to seek out what treat­ments work best for whom under what con­di­tions. We will have a stronger empha­sis on iden­ti­fy­ing key process­es to tar­get core medi­a­tors and mod­er­a­tors based on testable the­o­ries. [Read more…] about Dr. Judith Beck on the future of cog­ni­tive ther­a­py and psychotherapy

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: cognitive-behavioral-therapy, cognitive-therapy, computer-assisted therapy, Judith-Beck, Psychiatric Times, Psychotherapy, therapists

Helping young brains fight off anxiety by training and raising cognitive control

July 23, 2021 by Greater Good Science Center

Anx­i­ety is one of the most com­mon child­hood men­tal dis­or­ders. About 7% of chil­dren suf­fer from it at any giv­en time, with near­ly 1 in 3 ado­les­cents expe­ri­enc­ing it some­time dur­ing their teen years.

For an anx­ious child, seem­ing­ly nor­mal activ­i­ties can be hard. Wor­ried kids have trou­ble adjust­ing to school, mak­ing friends, and learn­ing. They can feel inhib­it­ed, avoid­ing chal­lenges by run­ning away or retreat­ing into them­selves. While par­ents may feel des­per­ate to help, their approach­es can back­fire. For exam­ple, try­ing to talk kids out of their feel­ings or keep them away from anx­i­ety-pro­duc­ing sit­u­a­tions may inad­ver­tent­ly make the anx­i­ety worse. [Read more…] about Help­ing young brains fight off anx­i­ety by train­ing and rais­ing cog­ni­tive control

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Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: anxiety, brain markers, brain training, childhood, cognitive-behavioral-therapy, cognitive-capacities, cognitive-control, cognitive-skills, Cognitive-Training, frontal-lobes, Kate Fitzgerald, Kid Power program, Learning, mental-disorders, National-Institutes-of-Health, neurochemicals, neuroscience, Working-memory

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