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Pear Ther­a­peu­tics’ dig­i­tal insom­nia ther­a­peu­tic will put FDA’s Pre­Cert frame­work through its paces (Mobi­Health­News):

“Pre­scrip­tion dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics com­pa­ny Pear Ther­a­peu­tics announced late last week that it has filed an FDA mar­ket­ing autho­riza­tion for Som­ryst, its dig­i­tal cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py for the treat­ment of adults with chron­ic insom­nia and depres­sion.

While an approval from the agency would mark the third autho­rized pre­scrip­tion dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tic for Pear Read the rest of this entry »

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Last month, researchers from over 60 coun­tries gath­ered at the Inter­na­tion­al Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy Association’s 6th World Con­gress in Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia, to share cut­ting-edge insights on the sci­ence of well-being.

Sev­er­al insights pre­sent­ed stood out to me as new or sur­pris­ing. Read the rest of this entry »

Fig­ure 3. Weight Loss at Month 1 Cor­re­lat­ed with Changes in BOLD in Regions Asso­ci­at­ed with Cog­ni­tive Con­trol. Cred­it: Selin Neselil­er et al

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New research sug­gests that high­er-lev­el brain func­tions have a major role in los­ing weight. In a study among 24 par­tic­i­pants at a weight-loss clin­ic, those who achieved great­est suc­cess in terms of weight loss demon­strat­ed more activ­i­ty in the brain regions of the lat­er­al pre­frontal cor­tex asso­ci­at­ed with self-con­trol. Read the rest of this entry »

Cred­it: UCIrvine/flickr , CC BY-NC-ND

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Mind­ful­ness in can­cer treat­ment: time to stop and think (The Con­ver­sa­tion):

“Breathe deeply and focus on the moment: mind­ful­ness now appears every­where as a tech­nique to improve well-being, includ­ing in health care.

Mind­ful­ness train­ing is often sug­gest­ed for can­cer patients to reduce high lev­els of anx­i­ety and dis­tress asso­ci­at­ed with diag­no­sis, treat­ment and antic­i­pa­tion of pos­si­ble dis­ease recur­rence. But two ques­tions per­sist: does mind­ful­ness work and, if so, for whom? Read the rest of this entry »

reSET® for Sub­stance Use Dis­or­der. Image Cred­it: Pear Ther­a­peu­tics

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The FDA just approved the first app for treat­ing sub­stance abuse (CNBC):

“The app, devel­oped by a start-up called Pear Ther­a­peu­tics, is designed to be pre­scribed by clin­i­cian and used along­side coun­sel­ing.

Pear’s tech­nol­o­gy dig­i­tizes a form of talk ther­a­py called cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py, or CBT, which focus­es on “exam­in­ing the rela­tion­ships between thoughts, feel­ings and behav­iors”, Read the rest of this entry »